Whether it's cracking codes in an escape room, whipping up a gourmet dish together, or high-energy drumming classes, these activities bring teams closer and tap into their collective potential in enjoyable and unforgettable ways.
Join us for a new season of African Drumming classes in 2024
Start the New Year with a bang! 💥 Come to our African Drumming Classes in Sheffield. 🪘
Join in with the amazing sounds and rhythms of the African djembe and Dundun drums of West Africa and get energised and inspired for 2024!
Need to burn some calories after Christmas? Scrap your plans for the gym - this class will do the job! Come and discover a new exciting way to exercise!
Suitable for complete beginners and ages from 12+ to adults.
Classes start in January - New Year Freebie on Thursday 11th Jan, followed by 'Easy Grooves' classes every Thursday up until 28th March.
Time: 19:30-20:40
Where? Duchess Road Community Centre, Shoreham Street, Sheffield, S1 4SR.
Prices:
£10 per class session
Or
£54 for a Block Booking package - providing 6 class credits to use within 8 weeks.
Advance booking essential as places are limited and book up fast.
To register classes, go straight to our booking site:
Want a try it out first before diving in? Come to our New Year Freebie Class on the 11th January..
Or find out more about the classes on our main Evening Class page:
BUY CHRISTMAS GIFT VOUCHERS FOR CLASSES
We are now selling Gift Vouchers for you to give your friends, family and loved ones this Christmas.
The gift vouchers can be used for single-class registrations or to purchase the Easy Grooves Block Booking pack.
Buy a gift voucher to give someone special in your life a wonderful new experience to feel inspired and energized for the new year ahead!
Watch Steve Rivers’ APPEARANCE on Channel 4 Steph’s Packed Lunch
This month I was live on air on Channel 4 Steph’s Packed Lunch sharing the joy of drumming with the nation!
The experience was amazing and I can now put in my record book the shortest drum workshop ever delivered - 40 seconds!
Watch the interview and drum workshop here - and join in with the beat!
In the interview, I talked to Steph about the therapeutic benefits of group drumming. 🪘
Steph’s Packed Lunch programme is just that - a programme packed full of different current affairs and discussions, so the challenge was to summarise what is a very broad subject into 3 minutes. ⏱️😯
In the interview, I talked about the way drumming can make us feel energised, release stress and calm the mind.⚡
I mentioned different groups we have worked with, such as:
Work teams, where the experience of drumming gives colleagues a chance to interact in a real way - particularly remote teams who normally interact with each other through a video screen.
Bereavement groups, where the social and empathic experience of group drumming helps people cope with their sense of grief and loneliness.
Neuro-divergent group, where the drumming experience can help participants gain confidence in social situations.
“Let’s all Play The Drums!”
Then came the 40-second workshop! Yes - you really can have a group playing a rhythm within seconds.
Fortunately, I already knew a rhythm which everybody could play instantly.
The rhythm is normally called ‘Clave’ and while its origins are from the beats of Cuba and African Highlife, this pattern is played in many popular tunes in Western culture.
In the programme, I chanted it as ‘Let’s..All..Play…The.Drums…!’
Very soon the whole TV studio was playing the beat - the presenters; the studio audience and even the broadcasting team!
It amazes me how immediate drumming can be! You wouldn’t think it in the clip, but almost every person who participated said they had no rhythm. By the end of the 40-second workshop, they were amazed at what they’d been able to play in such a short space of time. It just goes to show how accessible and inclusive drumming is and what a powerful activity it can be in bringing people together.
While TV studios are a high-energy, ‘full-on’ environment, it was such a fantastic experience and one which I would love to repeat on a future occasion!
If you would like to organise a drumming workshop for your team, or community group, why not give us a call? We would love to tell you more! Contact us here or call us on 0114 274 7527 / 07810406501.
Time and time again my djembe drum practice reminds me to find an easy effortless approach to other aspects of my professional life.
In addition to developing skills in listening and improving emotional well-being, there is a particular effortless grace from djembe drum technique which can offer an important life skill - sometimes success is achieved by doing less rather than more.
A djembe is a like small trampoline for your hands. It has its own power and resource of energy to do a lot of the work for you. When your hands are relaxed and you let them fall, their bounce helps to lift your hands to play a second beat - effortlessly. The process of eliminating excessive effort in playing develops over time and with practice. A sense of trust is required when you let the hands fall without worrying about how or where they land on the drum. Often beginners to djembe have a tendency to ‘hold on’ and control their hands, creating tension as they make a strike on the drum. Learning to release tension and developing trust in your hands will result in navigation from one point in a rhythm to another with little physical effort.
With this approach, I try to apply what I have learnt from practising djembe technique to other areas of my work.
As a drumming facilitator, part of my role is instructing others in technique and rhythms. How I deliver those instructions matters.
For example, when I teach drumming to very young children, I find their ability to play is increased when I give fewer instructions. Quite simply I try and talk less; tune in to their childhood excitement of drums and then pass out simple instructions – just a few at any given time. I find we get the same result as when I give out more instructions but with less tension and more fun for everyone involved.
Equally, when I’m in a situation where I’m training or supervising someone in my team, I am aware of the dangers of micro-management – overloading someone with instructions. I have learnt over the years to trust my colleagues more and allow them to find their own methods and solutions. Colleagues, like children in a class, will learn best by doing some things by themselves with my support.
Have you ever found some things in your work or life that seem to become more difficult the more you try? And that when you go back to something you find a simple solution which seems easy and effortless. And that this less-effort approach is better for your well-being and for the well-being of those around you?
What about your experience of teaching or managing others? We would love to hear from you if you would like to discuss this topic further. And perhaps at your next Staff Leadership or Team Development Day, the group drumming activity could provide a powerful reminder to trust yourself and your team!
Visit our contact page if you would like to talk to us.
If you’ve participated in one of our drumming teambuilding sessions, perhaps at a conference or a staff away day, you were, I hope, buzzing with the experience.
And, I hope, you were amazed at what a group could achieve through the power of the team, when everyone congregates and becomes musical together through the beat of the drum.
Alternatively, while the experience was a lot of fun, perhaps you may have found yourself thinking what was it all for?
We’ve all been there - in another creative team-building session, wondering what this has to do with our actual daily work.
In the case of Drumming Workshops, there’s the obvious concept of using music to demonstrate how your colleagues can work effectively together, but can such an activity offer some deeper learning to enhance the quality of normal routines.
That’s what I’m exploring in this blog post.
Is Dabbling A Worthy Cause?
I’m writing this in late February.
It is a difficult time of year if you live in the northern hemisphere, as the weather is still cold and, for most of us, that New Year, new approach buzz that you began with in January starts to waver a little.
Did you take up a hobby? Are you still doing it?
If you are, that is fantastic news and I hope it is giving you a new exciting experience to enrich your work life balance.
But maybe you gave it a real go for a few weeks; enjoyed it and then things in life got in the way and it dropped out of your weekly schedule.
If that’s the case, don’t fret - you won’t be alone!
It’s often very difficult to jump back into that new hobby, even if it was a great experience. Which begs the questions, if the hobby didn’t turn into a consistent practice, was dabbling at all worth it?
Do we still gain something from a one-off ‘try out’?
I think that when we try out new hobbies or participate in fun staff activities, the learning can become more profound over time.
New experiences create fresh neural pathways in your brain which can boost your sense of creativity as you make connections between experiences and things you do in your life.
Finding these connections can give you a deeper understanding and sense of purpose in your daily working routine. Trying a new hobby, even if it only lasts a short while, can reinforce skills and resolve problems in seemingly unrelated aspects of your life.
Correlations & Amplifications…
Recently, I’ve had various revelations about the way entirely different activities have emboldened my line of work.
I have a fun job as a drumming teacher and music facilitator.
It is extremely rewarding, but, like any job, it presents challenges. Like many people, I have dabbled with other hobbies particularly during my middle-age years.
These have included: juggling, yoga, running, baking, fungi foraging, chopping wood and meditation.
Often these things have seemed like disparate activities fighting for first place in my internal list of options of what to do in my free time.
However, I have recently experienced strong connections between some of these activities and it has become an exciting revelation to discover their correlations.
Here are a couple of examples…
When I’ve practised yoga, I’ve become aware of the various poses that involve a sense of focus on body sensation. The Mountain Pose is a good example. It is a simple standing posture where you focus on the sensation of the entire soles of your feet making contact with the ground.
This, for me, has a direct correlation with learning African Hand Drumming technique and the way you rely on the sense of touch and sensation in the hands to guide your point of contact on the drum.
Improving technique in either of these disciplines relies more on how things feel rather than what you can see.
Another correlation is with juggling.
I have dabbled with juggling on and off for nearly 30 years. Having recently started teaching my daughter, I have become aware of the different optical skills which come into play.
As you juggle, there becomes two ways of seeing - the ‘targeted’ point where you focus your sight (the point where the ball reaches its optimum height) and the peripheral seeing where you see your hands catch the balls in the corners of your gaze.
Where is the correlation between this and drumming?
Just as there are multiple ways of seeing involved in juggling, there are multiple ways of hearing involved in playing the African Drums, which involves polyrhythmic music played in groups.
The real challenge is to be able to keep your rhythm together and ensure that it stays in time with the other rhythms being played.
You can only do this by adopting different types of hearing. You are listening to the part you are playing, yet at the same time you develop a softer ‘passive’ hearing of the other rhythm patterns.
Like the peripheral vision in juggling, this doesn’t pay too much attention to the detail of other patterns but hears them enough to form an impression of how they fit with what you are playing.
The Aha Moment
A friend of mine, who for many years has been involved in learning and development, describes this experience of finding analogies between seemingly disparate things as the ‘Aha Moment’.
Experiencing this ‘Aha Moment’ can feel like a profound revelation.
As though a light has switched on in your head when all of a sudden, a connection you have made gives your life a new sense of meaning and purpose.
This can reinvigorate and bolster our mindful dedication to the different activities and skills in our lives – whether it is in work or hobbies and interests.
So, to go back on the original question – is it worth ‘trying something out”?
Is it worth organising the Team Building activity, even if some of the employees at the time do not quite ‘get it’?
My opinion is… absolutely!
Without being open to trying new experiences, we deny ourselves this opportunity discover those ‘Aha Moments’ which can enhance our lives and can improve the way we apply ourselves to skills and abilities.
You never know, you may even discover a new hobby you really love!
Have any of you readers experienced this ‘Aha’ moment - where you find a link between the different skills and hobbies you practise in your life?
Perhaps you have discovered a link after attending one of our Drumming Team Building Events or found it from another team building activity, hobby or skill.
If so, I’d love to hear about them - head over to the contact page to let me know!
For us, mid-February means one thing - Samba season! This week the streets of Rio and other cities across Brazil are buzzing with the unmistakable sound of the biggest carnival in the world.
We love to recreate the magic of the Brazilian carnival atmosphere here in the UK and many of our school clients choose this month as the perfect time to book our Brazilian Samba Drumming workshop.
Take a look at the fun these primary school children had when we visited their school:
The vibrant colours, costumes and rhythms of the Brazilian carnival parades are like no other experience! The amazing carnival coincides with the Christian calendar before Lent. One of the highlights of the week is the Mardi Gras event; otherwise known as Shrove Tuesday, and as many of your school children will know as ‘Pancake Day’. We love pancakes in the UK, but how amazing must it be to live in a country that celebrates this day with drumming, percussion, singing and dancing!
Our Samba Drumming workshops offer a fantastic way to bring school geography topics to life. As well as being a fun, energising musical experience, it's a brilliant way to explore South American culture and discover the way countries use music and rhythm to celebrate important events in their calendar. Just like our African Drumming workshops, Samba offers children a different way to experience music using teamwork to create polyrhythms.
Would you like a day of Samba drumming at your school? We're now taking bookings for the summer term and have a few slots remaining for this term.
Click the button below to find out more:
Or contact us to book your a Samba workshop. We'd love to bring the festive carnival feeling to your school!
If you have just started learning the African djembe, you may be feeling frustrated with the sound you’re creating on the side of the drum. Perhaps you are wondering why it is that whenever you attempt to make the tone, you get a flat dead muted note. If you’re experiencing this frustration, try focusing more on the way you lift your hand, than the way it falls on the drum. Any unnecessary movement in the joints, fingers and wrist as you lift your hand will affect the quality of your tone.
Raising your hand to strike the drum, the tips of your fingers need to be the first thing that lifts up with the rest of the hand, wrist and arm following behind. Imagine you’re a string puppet and there is a cord attached to the very tips of your fingers. As the imaginary cord lifts, your fingers come up first and everything else follows. Doing this sets you up to strike the ‘tone spot’ on the djembe with the right angle so fingers bounce off easily. As your hand and fingers come back down for the strike, your fingers will be slightly raised at a 30 degree angle and land gracefully on the tone spot of the drum. If your fingers are relaxed and not tense (more on finger relaxation soon), they will bounce off the drum creating a beautiful resonance for your tone. But the point is not to think about the way your hand and fingers drop – it is the way you lift which matters.
You can see a djembe lesson video here:
The difference between a ‘good lift’ and a ‘bad lift’ can be very subtle. It is really about which part of the hand/arm lifts first. Here are a couple of examples of what can go wrong as you lift your hand to play:
1. Dropped wrist technique
Djembe technique to avoid - Lifting with the wrist first will mean the fingers are over projected as they land on the drum resulting in a dull flat sound.
As you raise your hand to strike a tone, your wrist might lift up first with your hand hanging on behind. Because your hand has been in this hanging position, your fingers will be projected forward as they fall to the drum, striking the ‘tone spot’ at the wrong angle. Instead of the fingers landing in a flat position, the projected angle of the fingers will absorb the bounce and press into the skin giving you a dull closed note without any resonance.
There is alternative outcome to this scenario with the ‘dropped’ wrist. When you raise your ‘hanging hand’ to the optimum height, you may flick the wrist back so that the fingers don’t project forward as they come down. The problem with this is technique is it creates too much movement between the arm and the hand as you play. Any unnecessary movement in the hand will sap your energy, hindering your ability to play with control and maintain stamina when playing for prolonged periods. However, the main issue is that this flick of the wrist at the top will potentially create a ‘slap’ sound instead of a tone – not a good ‘slap’ but a bad slap without any control or subtlety.
2. Dropped finger technique
Djembe technique to avoid - dropping the fingers as you lift to play a tone.
This technique is far subtler than the wrist one – and hence harder to detect and correct. In this scenario the wrist is fine. It is not interfering as the you lift and in general the hand is lifting first. But there is just the slightest drop in the fingers as the hand lifts up. You may barley notice it, but it can make all the difference. Usually in this scenario the knuckles are lifting first - either the fore knuckles or the front ones. In the same way as the wrist technique (but this time less acute) the fingers project forward and absorb the bounce to give you the same flat sound without tone resonance.
How to improve your lift movement
Good lifting technique for djembe - fingers lifting up first as you raise your hand to strike the drum.
If you think you might have fallen in to one of these habits and you are getting frustrated with your sound, here is a fun way to apply a nice ‘fingertip lift’ technique. Rest your hands on the side of the drum with your fingertips in contact with the ‘tone’ spot of the drum. If you don’t know where this is, check out our blog on hand positioning). Then lift the fingers up (really make sure your fingers up first) and do a ‘hiya’ with your hand. The hand just lifts up and come sown again. If you are with a group, you can all get really silly and start doing ‘hiya’ gestures with each other. Invariably this hand sign involves the fingers lifting up first so this gesture will trick your hand into applying the lift of the finger tips. With a little practise, this gesture will form a new habit in your hand movement which over time you will unconsciously apply to your tone technique.
I understand there is a counter argument to this technique that the arm and hand should remain as one unit and be straight. With the fingertips lifting first, the hand and the arm will not necessarily be straight and there will be some movement in the wrist. However, I don’t think there is really any problem in there being some wrist movement when djembe playing – what is important is the way it moves. With this ‘fingers first’ technique your wrist will be involved with lifting the hand up but will not interfere in a way that detriments your technique.
The other thing to recognise is the movement in tone and slap becomes far subtler as your technique improves. This means that this application of hand and arm technique may be highly pronounced when you first start to practise but will be less exaggerated over time.
I hope this blog helps you on your journey in mastering the djembe tone sound and I hope the exercise proves useful. At the very least – it’s nice to just say ‘Hiya!’
Receive further djembe tuition videos on our Youtube channel. We have a great series of video called Djembe for absolute Beginners:
Nothing beats the live experience! Why not come to our African Drumming Class every Thursday Evening. See button below for more info:
Or if you are looking for a class in your area, do get in touch. We can provide weekend workshops for drum groups. Alternatively we can recommend other teachers we know nearby.
Dear friends, happy new year and welcome to 2023.
So how was 2022 for you? Did you manage to have fun? Was it a challenging year? Were you feeling the heat in the summer? Were you shivering in December? 2022 really was something of a roller coaster wasn’t it!
1. Lowering our Carbon Impact
In May this year we acquired our new Electric Van and so now we can travel to deliver your event with zero emissions and a low carbon impact.
Our new electric van - we are now delivering our workshops with zero emissions and a low carbon footprint!
2. Large Workshops
We delivered some really big workshops in June – Two Samba workshops each for over 200 people. The sound of a group this size playing was breath-taking!
3. Restrictions were Lifted
Schools, Corporate and Community clients finally opened up for group gatherings following two years of covid restrictions – our diary got super busy in the summer!
4. Festivals were back!
We had a great time at the Underneath the Stars Folk festival this year, delivering a big Boomwhacker Percussion workshop for the punters!
5. Group Drumming Workshops for Children
In November we worked with seven different Rotherham schools as part of a multi booking event for Wickersley Academy Trust. Hundreds of children discovered the joy of group drumming through our African Music Experience workshop!
The Challenges of 2022 and Our Remedy for 2023
It all started well. Lockdown began to ease and pretty soon the simple process of people meeting up to socialise no longer felt like a complete palaver.
Suddenly, we could hear each other when we talked as our voices were no longer muffled under a mask; we didn’t have to queue so much, and no longer did we have to relentlessly complete covid disclaimer forms each time we entered a building or participated in an event.
But as the year went on problems developed in the world that began to affect us all. As the weather got super-hot, 2022 broke the records as the hottest year ever and we were reminded that climate change never went away during covid and remains the biggest threat to humanity and life on earth.
But if that wasn’t worrying enough, someone’s reckless decisions created a crisis in Eastern Europe sending tremors all over the globe.
Yes, I know this is a rather depressing opening to a New Year blog. But given the challenges of 2022, it feels appropriate to recognise the fear and uncertainty 2023 brings.
As someone whose profession is engaged in using music to enhance mental health and wellbeing, it feels important to consider such feelings and how they can be processed to feel positive and strong for the coming year.
While the big problems in the world dominate news headlines, it is vital to recognise the need to switch off the noise; doom, and gloom of the media and think about what we can do with the time given to us to improve our wellbeing and the wellbeing of those closest to us.
I am not a life coach nor a therapist, but I found something that improved my life nearly 30 years ago. It continues to really make a positive difference to my quality of life today – drumming!
I have been drumming since the age of 13. Apart from playing West African and Brazilian drums and percussion, I am forever tapping on randoms surfaces and objects – window sills, cereal boxes, steering wheels, tin cans, cd cases, paper, plastic bags, match boxes.
And if nothing is to hand, I will be tapping on my legs or stamping my feet. Yes, it drives my loved ones mad, but they know I am a better person for it.
But the real magic of drumming is massively amplified by drumming in a group with others. It is such an exhilarating feeling for everyone when they can share the joy of music and rhythm through something as accessible and inclusive as a drum!
Why not make 2023 be the year you connect with other people around you to make your world and community a better happier place.
We have been connecting people through music for over 20 years. It works!
If you want to discover more, click the button below…
Try something super energising for the New Year. African Drumming evening classes
Start the new school term with a bang! School drumming and percussion workshops
Motivate your team for a successful and profitable 2023. Corporate drumming workshops.