"Our first online Sounds of Change training"
With the COVID-19 crisis, many daily jobs and tasks went ‘online’, which in turn forced us to ask ourselves the question: Can we somehow do our training sessions online?
Considering the nature of what we do and how we do it, it sounded far too challenging. Our work is all about being together, keeping eye contact, working as a group and non-verbal leadership. About feeling the body to support the mind and collaborating to compose, create and improvise music side by side.
Right at this moment of overthinking possibilities, our partner organisation SPARK contacted us with the question if we are willing to explore the possibilities of running online activities with their students. This created a clear goal and context for us to start from. We also reminded ourselves that craziness and creativity are found within the very DNA of the work of Sounds of Change, so we thought “let's give it a try!”
SPARK plays an important role in the countries around Syria by offering training and guidance to (migrant) entrepreneurs who want to start a business in the region. It is a challenging terrain which suffers from a lack of information, bureaucracy, and transparency. SPARK offers access to higher (vocational) education and supports entrepreneurship and growth oriented SME (Small and Medium size Enterprises) development in fragile states so that young, ambitious people can lead their societies into stability and prosperity.
Many of SPARK's students live in challenging circumstances at the moment. The need for connection and mental health and well-being was always big, and may be even bigger now, when everybody lives in quarantine.
We held a few online meetings with our Sounds of Change trainers to trial and develop ideas. As always, the sessions were full of fun and creativity. Many new and inventive ideas popped up, but we also discovered the fresh challenges that the online world we’re entering presents.We had to let go of some of our desired outcomes and we decided that the core focus of this new online training should be at least:
To create meaningful connections through interaction
To create a safe space for people to express themselves and release stress (mental health and well-being)
To have people contributing to a (new) musical product.
By thinking over and almost re-designing our training from scratch, we developed a three-day online workshop with 12 students from SPARK.
The students we worked with, are located in different countries in the Middle East. They live in Turkey, Lebanon, Kurdistan (N-Iraq) and Palestine (the Westbank) and we feel that the huge advantage of online training is that it removes those geographical boundaries.
Excited as we were to start this new adventure, it hasn’t always been easy. We have faced technical challenges such as poor internet connection, or certain applications/software not being available in some countries. Most of the participants don't have laptops so have to use their phones, which is exhausting when you are participating for several hours a day. Most of all, you do not experience the same level of 'group connection’ when you can only see people on your laptop screen. Phones are even more restrictive as you can see no more than four people onscreen. We were, however, able to create a 'digital circle' for people to sit in and share personal stories, to still have the experience of somebody sitting next to you.
On the left, you can see how our digital circle looked like.
Despite of all the challenges -or many because of them-, many beautiful things happened within the group across the three days. Our participants opened up, shared, and expressed themselves. They explored, laughed, and connected through sound and movement. They started to compose music and didn't want to stop when the training was finished! An advantage of working with online music composing software is that the participants can create music whenever and wherever they want, so they are still making music today!
Perhaps because of the challenges we faced, we were able to establish a strong connection amongst the participants in a very short time. They worked together as one, helped each other to remain patient, and ultimately, to make it work. Showing commitment in challenging circumstances creates trust and connectedness and creativity was an asset we all had to use at unexpected moments for sure.
These are some of the reflections that our participants shared with us:
“I can say that it is one of the best workshops I’ve participated in. Time flied by, and I really had the feelings of achievement, challenge and happiness. I also was comfortable and felt the team spirit with all the participants. And I see this workshop as a beginning of a new and beautiful path”
“I learned that I’m able to excel in doing what i love to do”
“I learned that patience and keep trying are the keys for any closed doors one can face, and that there is a hidden abilities in music that I didn’t know about”
“I learned to participate in more of such trainings in the future, remotely (online) or in real, because it encourages sharing, participation and social skills”
After reading our participants’ evaluation and feedback, we feel happy, proud, and surprisingly satisfied with our first effort in this weird online world. We’re already looking forward to our next online training session and until then there's a lot to learn and explore!
