NORWAY Playshop – OCT 2017

Hello My Friends,

In Norse, the Norwegian language, Mikael says: “An to Set-A-Gong... 1 - 2 - Start” (spelled phonetically). Lars says: “An to All La-mear, 1 - 2 - all Join.”

In this Norway Playshop, Mikael Khei was lead trainer, Lars Kolstad was elder-in-chief, and I was color and cover. We had a lot of fun co-facilitating the process and was done with the basic exercises by the finish of day two. That left us plenty of time for free form jump time and musicality games. We even had time for a great late night on Saturday eve.

Our last Playshop in Norway was in Bergen in 2014. Lars was the organizer. This year we held it in Oslo with Mikael as organizer. Between Mikael and Lars, we have done 10 programs throughout Scandinavia. This was our 11th Scandinavian Playshop. But it is our 12th Nordic Playshop if you include the one we did in Iceland.

Our Playshop population represented Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Iran, Iceland, Germany and Mexico.

Lars did the Saturday morning Drum Call with Mikael doing the critique, and setting up the training for the day. On Saturday, we focus on the Dictator, Director and early Facilitator, as well as the 7 Steps of Drum Call.

On Sunday, Mikel did the Run The Map exercise and I did the critique, setting up the training for the day.

On Sunday, we focus on the roll of of the facilitator, song sculpts and layering in to those songs as a way to raise the musicality of the group towards Orchestrational consciousness.

Mikael did a great job and most of the notes that I took down were from what I was learning from him, rather than what I could teach him. He taught me a lot about “Holding the space” and has a good radar on how much cognitive input is enough.

Our co-facilitation training challenge was that Mikael’s delivery speed is around 40 and my delivery speed is around 60, so he sped up a little and I slowed down a little and met in the middle. By the middle of the Playshop program, we evolved from “Your turn - My turn” to a well balanced co-training process. We all had a lot of fun working together.

We moved through the Playshop training so smoothly that we had time for a great late-night - deep drumming session at the end of Saturday evening.

Lars was great sharing his knowledge and experience with the group. He has a unique way of dealing with the kind of situations that face of all of in any drum circle. He also was able to tickle the hearts of the child inside of all of us.

I am pleased that I will be seeing them both at the Scotland Training-the-Trainer program in November.

After a brief rest, I’m off to Germany…….  {]]’;-)

2017 Norway DCF Playshop Demographics:

4 School Teachers

5 Music Teachers

4 Drum Teachers

0 Music Therapist

1 Elderly related Professionals

4 Adults At Risk Professionals

5 Kids at Risk Professionals

7 Special Needs Professionals

6 Corporate Drum Facilitators

1 Psychotherapist

3 Infant- Toddler Facilitators

2 Medical related Doctors, Nurses and Health care Professionals

5 School Rhythm Event Facilitators

6 Community Drum Circles Facilitators

1 Drum Makers

6 Professional Musicians

10 People Connected to nonprofit organizations

6 Culturally Specific Drummers

All Recreational Drummers

Life is a dance   Arthur