Hello My Friends,

Launching the VMC Global Training Team is an evolutionary process that has been a long time coming for Village Music Circles.

As a young man I had a furious passion for drumming, rhythm, music, and the power it had to connect people. As I pioneered rhythm-based events into many different populations, I met a number of people who guided and mentored me along the way. They directed me towards the realization that I was on a mission to serve community as a Rhythm Care Giver through the evolutionary power of facilitating rhythm-based events.

My personal mission has been to help children of all ages to Uncover, Discover, and Recover, their fearlessly innocent ability to express the natural rhythmical spirit that they once possessed as a child. Along the way, I discovered that group improvisational drumming events were a safe supportive environment where I could help them to be able to share that spirit with other people.

From these small mission seeds, an international recreational drumming community has slowly grown into a mighty tree. It has organically grown different branches to serve many diverse populations, from toddlers, school kids, kids-at-risk, all the way to Health Rhythms, special needs, corporate and the well elderly. Our community of rhythm event facilitators now serve populations that range way beyond recreational drumming. This powerful liberating tool now serves populations that range from pre-natal all the way to hospice.

I did not start this journey by making a specific decision in any point in time to become a rhythmical evangelist, a rhythmical caregiver or to help pioneer a rhythm revolution movement. The development of my personal mission in life evolved through hundreds of experiences, discoveries, realizations, ego deaths, and decisions. Through thick and thin, I have followed my bliss in such a way that I have somehow become an elder in an international community that all of the drum circle facilitators have helped build over the years. This journey has been my lifelong “elder in training” training. And I’m still in training.

To some extent in your own life’s journey, you have found yourself at somewhat the same place. Hopefully, along with the understanding of that cosmic position in your life, a realization that has come with it, that you are also an “Elder in Training.”

Over the years, with the supportive help and guidance of students turned mentors such as Mary Tolena, Jim Boneau and many of you who are reading this message, the development of Village Music Circles has evolved organically. By following the simple personal dictate of “Share Your Spirit” and answering the question of “What can I do to serve this community?” we have found ourselves here at the next evolution of what has always been the core of Village Music Circles’ mission: To Facilitate Human Potential Through Rhythm.

The year-long Train The Trainer experience (TTT), that 16 of my protégées from 11 countries have engaged in, is obviously Village Music Circles’s next evolutionary step on this journey.

My TTT plan was initiated many years ago as I quietly vetted my protégées as they walked their talk. All of them were invited to participate in this TTT training because of their integrity, commitment to building their community, and to the mission. Jim Boneau and I started developing this program 6 years ago. It has finally evolved to the point that we could put the plan into action.

Our developing rhythmaculture facilitation community has been ripe for this next step, and these 16 people are the harbingers and pioneers of that evolution.

The VMC Certified Global DCFacilitator Trainers are:

Cameron Tummel, John Fitzgerald, Paul Dear, Jim Boneau – International VMC Trainer Support Team
Lars Kolstad, Mikael Khei – Scandinavia
Dr. Jane Bentley, Paul Dear – UK, Ireland
Benjamin Flohr – Germany
Pau Gimeno – Spain
Harshil Filippo Chiostri – Italy
Roberto Narain, Vasundhara Das – India
Tomoko Yokota – Japan
Myoung-hun Song – Korea
John Hagedorn – Southeast Asia
Simon Faulkner – Australia, New Zealand

These people have my full respect, backing and support. I stand behind them and beside them as they join the Village Music Circles Global DCFacilitator Training Team.

villagemusiccirclesglobal.com

When you look at our small cadre of Certified VMC Training team members, you can see that through their actions over the years, that they have chosen themselves for this next life’s challenge to be a VMC Drum Circle Facilitator Trainer.

My invitation for them to join Jim and I as VMC-Certified Drum Circle Facilitator Trainers was just an observance of preordained etiquette.

By their actions and efforts, they have already helped me make the correct choice.

It was their own organic process that brought them to the Train The Trainers program and, hopefully (God, Buddha and Baba willing), it will be through an organic process that we, as the VMC Global Training Team, will all help VMC grow into its next phase and expansion.

Since the completion of our Certification Training in Scotland last fall (2017) our VMC Global Training Team has done 3-day drum circle facilitation trainings in Korea, Italy, Malaysia, and China, with more trainings scheduled in Norway, Germany, Australia, India and Japan.

Whatever the VMC expansion will turn out to be, I’m sure it will be a benefit, not just to our ever-growing international community of rhythmical evangelists and DCFacilitators that VMC Global will train, but it will benefit the thousands of people their students will serve by making those people’s lives just a little better… One Beat at a Time.

Share your Spirit…  Arthur