Drum Circle for Organization Development

The sound clip below was recorded during my day 1 drum circle training. Click on this link to listen to full sound clip.

Drum Circles was featured on Straits Times today (1st Jun 09). Here's an extract of what it:

Novel drumming circle injects fun, fosters social bonds.

"The concept of community drumming circles is said to have started in the United states. The pioneer of the movement is widely considered to be percussionist Arthur Hull, who describes it as the use of a rhythm-based event to foster unity. People of different levels of musical ability can join in and all come together to make music and, at the same time, build a sense of community and belonging. In such circles, members also have to learn how to cooperate and collaborate with one another."

Two weeks ago, I flew up to KL and took a 3 day course on Drum Circle Facilitation from Arthur Hull. I got to learn a great facilitation tool, and know many fun loving facilitators. We now have a great support group for this spanking new movement.

I came back and started conducting drum circles. I managed to integrate this new tool into my Quality Management Training. The results are really great, and I am quite impressed with its impact. As a game to summarize learning points for the Quality management class, drum circle not only reinforced quality concepts well, it also helped improve communications, and build team spirit. Participants were energized, and they were beaming with joy at the end of the training. The feedback I got were very positive and encouraging - they loved it! I think I will have run drum circles in my quality training in future. I am pretty sure the Quality Management training and ISO 9001 training will pack a punch.

For more information on drum circle, check out Arthur Hull's website here. Good news for those who wants to learn drum circle, Arthur Hull will be coming to Singapore next year (No need to go Hawaii or KL for the course).