Corporate ice breakers for training session - Unbeatable Energy work with Google
Corporate ice breakers for training session - Unbeatable Energy work with Google
This month we had the pleasure of providing a Boomwhacker workshop for a rather well known search engine company known as Google. Here is Steve Rivers’ account of the event: ‘‘There was something unusual about delivering this event. Like nearly everyone in the world who has a computer, I use Google everyday.
Google’s logo is probably the most familiar icon in the 21st Century. If you are trying to get from A to B, exchange big files online, researching or uploading videos, sending and receiving emails, planning your diaries, or simply wanting to know everything you need to know about almost anything, Google is sure to be involved somewhere. I can therefore be forgiven for being somewhat thrown when I received an enquiry from one of their representatives.
Rather embarrassingly, I even asked the enquirer to spell the name of their organisation because I couldn’t quite hear it – it sounded a bit like Google! Anyway I felt incredibly honoured and excited to be asked to deliver an event for them. Google wanted us to work with a group of outstanding students from the UK who had been attending their Bold Immersion Education Programme.
The Boomwhacker session was scheduled to close their course with something to energise and bring everybody together. The group were absolutely brilliant to work with! They were bright, confident, and really up for giving things a try. As a music facilitator it is always really refreshing to work with a group who give you so much back. When they clashed the Boomwhackers together, the group really gave the percussion tubes some ‘pow’!
A small group of only 30 began to have the sound of 100! By the end of the session we had managed involve the diatonic, pentatonic and chromatic colours from the Boomwhacker range and had managed to create the complex ‘Dorian’ rhythm which combines up to seven rhythm parts. All this was combined with dance movements which the participants fused with their rhythm grooves. The final two minutes of the session? – Awesome! Finally I was completely inspired by working at the Google office.
However, ‘office’ is not quite the right word – it was more like walking into an art gallery. How can I describe it? You know how every now and then you click onto Google and the logo has been changed to some new visual theme or topic. Well it’s like seeing all those things in 3D! There were so many things to attract the eye – colours, shapes, weird pods, Telephone boxes! The place was perhaps as one might expect – unmistakably ‘Googly’ – an environment buzzing with fresh ideas and creative energy.’’
Unbeatable Energy would like to thank Google for giving us the opportunity to work with their students and we hope we can have the opportunity to work with them again in the future.
A culture of drum and dance has been formed at Mount Junior and Infant School!
A culture of drum and dance has been formed at Mount Junior and Infant School!
We have been running African drumming workshops for the Year 4’s at Mount Junior and Infants School since 2006 and we look forward to the event every year. This year was our fifth time at the school and every year it gets better and better. The first time we worked with the Year 4’s in 2006, we had a performance at the end of the day for all the children’s parents and the rest of the school. A very brave pupil from the class jumped into the drum circle space and did an amazing dance as the rest of the class drummed a pounding rhythm. The next minute two other children came into the space; then another and another. A couple of seconds later and it was ‘pitch invasion’!
Since that momentus day, a tradition in the school of dancing to the drumming has become firmly entrenched. There is a code that everyone follows – dances are performed by one or two children at a time, the drummers mustkeep drumming and the children learn to switch over and never hog the dance space.
Each class looks forward to being in the Year 4 when it will be their time to have a go. The Year 6 and Year 5 children who previously had a go still get involved in the performance by jumping into the dance space.
Like any business, running a drumming education company is not easy. During the really hard times, every business owner must sometimes ask themselves – is it all worth it? When we go to Mount Junior and Infants School we always get the answer – YES! This is what bringing a taste of African culture into schools is all about! Seeing the fantastic legacy year after year. It is incredibly rewarding and uplifting seeing children who never forget the experience and who are no longer afraid to dance and move! Every year we get to see how drumming, dance, music, culture – it all makes a huge difference to their lives!
