Second Week

Our Second Week of workshops in the Srebrenica area focused on composing. Our aim was to help the children in each group to write a song or some music that we could integrate into the Beauty and the Beast performance in December. We also aim to share the songs among all the groups and we hope that the children from Potočari, Skelani and the kindergarten will be in the audience for the final performance in December. We think they will enjoy seeing the music they composed performed live, and they will be able to join in with songs they know.

In the kindergarten session, led by Toni, we helped the children write the words and melody to a song about the character Beauty. The children were very proud of this achievement and wanted to sing it many times. The session ended with some high energy dancing to some Scottish Celidh music played by Lewis and I. In Potočari we began work on two sets of lyrics describing hideous beasts! We encouraged the children to draw their own monsters, and were pleased to find that several children had brought along their own 'Kibungu' monster drawings for us to look at, following our session last week.

We chose a different approach to composition for the Skelani group, as these kids had shown such potential for creative work last week and we wanted to provide them with something which was adequately challenging. We decided to focus on creating an instrumental piece which we hope might form the basis of a larger scale work, possibly to be played at the end of the theatre performance. In order to give the kids an idea of how to create music for instruments that they may not be familiar with, we first introduced them to our viola, oboe and melodica. Following this we invited individual kids to 'conduct' us (both separately and together) while we improvised music which followed their hand movements (high/low pitch for one hand, quiet/loud for the other). After several exploratory attempts at this we then invited the whole group to suggest ways in which we could use this technique to create a short piece of music. The group proved, once again, to be very forthcoming and showed great enthusiasm for making musical decisions such as deciding the order in which each instrument would start playing and making suggestions as to what sort of mood they wanted to create. We added djembe (played by Toni) and recorded two short improvised pieces which followed the 'conducting' method. The kids were happy with our final attempt and we are excited about expanding on this music next time.

Unfortunately we were unable to work with the music section this week as only one boy turned up for the rehearsal. Again, this was disappointing, and we need to consult those involved in organising things in Srebrenica so that hopefully we can get things started as soon as possible.

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Earlier in the week, Lewis and I led two workshops in an elementary school in Dobrinja, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. We were accompanied by Nina and Stella, two women who are aiming to work regularly with kids from this school, on art projects. This programme is geared towards engaging kids (13-15 years old) who have previously avoided extra-curricular activities, in creative work. The two 45 min sessions were a lot of fun - we aimed to offer the kids a variety of different musical activities in this short amount of time (including singing, performing on percussion instruments and various musical games including a version of the conducting activity described above). We were very pleased with these session and felt that we really managed to break the ice and engage with the groups. Hopefully we can work with this group again over the next couple of months.

First Week in Srebrenica

Our workshops in the Srebrenica area began on the 7th and 8th of October. The plan from now until December is to do four music workshops each week. On Wednesdays we will visit the kindergarten (near the Srebrenica town centre) and then a school in the nearby village of Potočari. In the afternoon we will help with the music section for the Srebrenica Children's Theatre's forthcoming production of 'Beauty and the Beast'. On Thursdays we will travel to a school in the somewhat remote village of Skelani.

In all workshops we will be working with our friend, percussionist Toni Pešikan, and in Potočari and Skelani we will be joined by Nemanja Stjepanović and Miroslav Vasić who will support our activities and help with translation.

Here is a report of the first week's activities from Tory Tevis of Musicians without Borders...

"The activities of the Music Bus for this fall are just kicking off as the schedule and rhythm of the weekly workshops is established. This was the first week that all the planned workshops were able to take place. The workshop team includes Sarajevo drummer, Tony Pesikan; former students from the University of Edinburgh, Sarah Ridgeon, Hannah Linklater and Lewis Forbes; and Srebrenica youth, Nemanja Đukanović and Miroslav Vasić. The team is still figuring out the best ways to work and divide themselves, but for this week they all attended the majority of the workshops. The funding for these workshops is provided by The Edward Starr Charitable Trust of the United Kingdom.

The first workshop was scheduled to take place at noon on Wednesday the 7th at the Srebrenica Kindergarten. Unfortunately, there was some confusion about this plan and the workshop had to be rescheduled for the following day.

The next workshop was at 13:00 at the Potočari Primary School. This went very well and even more children participated than expected – 23 were in attendance, plus the 6 facilitators. After some warm-up games, the basic activities of the workshop (and the workshops the following day) were based around creating characteristics, sounds and movements for an imaginary creature called a „kibungu.“ The children really enjoyed the opportunity to be creative, use percussion instruments which the team had brought along, and to do some acting as small groups created their own kibungu. To end the workshop Hannah, Sarah and Lewis performed a song with their respective instruments – viola, oboe, and guitar. The viola and oboe were particularly interesting for the children because these are instruments most of them have never seen or even heard of before.

At 14:00 there was a Drumming Workshop scheduled at Srebrenica Dom Kulture (Srebrenica Cultural Center), but unfortunately only 2 boys came because it was the first one and others did not know about it. Tony led a workshop anyway, with Sarah, Hannah and Lewis playing along with the two participants. Hopefully they will spread word to their friends and by next week, more will attend. Tony had them do rhythms on djembe drums which were challenging for them but they could attain with practice. Tony had definitely worn them out by the end!

On Thursday the 8th, the day began with the re-scheduled workshop at the Srebrenica Kindergarten at 12:00. 10 children participated and followed a series of activities similar to those used at the Primary School, but adapted for a younger age-group. Tony drew a Kibungu for them with their input about what each part of its body would look like – this was something they found especially funny!

Miroslav and Nemanja rejoined the team to head out to the village of Skelani for a workshop which began at 14:00. The village is not so easy to get to and it was a long drive for all the passengers. At the school though, we were greeted by 15 waiting youth who were very excited to get going. Activities again centered on the Kibungu, but because it was a slightly older group they were able to exercise a lot more originality. In future weeks, group leaders here will work to make activities for this group even more challenging as it is clear they are enthusiastic and have a lot of creativity.

This first full set of workshops really allowed the team to meet and gauge the children and youth they will be working with and to determine how they will best be able to engage them. While they have already generated a lot of excitement among the participants with this initial set of workshops, the coming weeks should allow for even more success, creativity and growth as they continue to shape and expand the workshops for those they are working with."

Welcome!

Hello friends and welcome to our new blog which we call Pjevamo i sviramo ("we sing and we play")! Hannah, Sarah and I are going to write here about our musical activities in Sebrenica and Sarajevo so that anyone that might be interested can read all about what we are doing.

In the first week of September we were volunteers at the annual summer camp for a group from Los Rosales school in Mostar. It was a wonderful camp (as always) in the idyllic setting of the Land of Friendship and Peace, Rakovice (near Sarajevo). The theme this year was birds, and it produced lots of great songs, dances and artwork.