The Works’ ‘Banging’ Day Out
Yesterday The Works team were shipped off in taxis to a mystery location for their latest quarterly team away day; a little treat where have a bit of fun as a team ensuring we follow our ‘We Are One’ mantra.
The taxi doors opened up at St. Martin’s Institute in North Leeds where, after being pushed up a flight of stairs, we walked into this:
Our first sight upon entry.
Signs of panic could clearly be read on everyone’s face as Steve and Olly from Active Rhythmology welcomed us, whose mission is to use rhythm and percussion instruments to help people in groups of all sizes to relax, reduce stress and have fun while they are learning to listen, respond and co-operate with others – becoming ‘rhythmoloised’.
Steve and Olly from Active Rhythmology
The two proceeded to tune in the team’s tempos as a whole group, using only our hands, feet and voice to create a rhythm with five different parts, before being upgraded to the ‘BoomWhackers’, musical plastic tubes which could play different pitches in sound when hit.
Dorota hasn’t quite got the hang of to play the boomwhacker… Can you guess which one she is?
Again, after a whole group session to get us up to speed with things, the teams were then split into three smaller groups to go and create their own musical pieces using the instruments they had been practicing with earlier. It was fair to say none of us are going to topping the charts anytime soon with our efforts…
Company Accountant, Brian, also discovered he has the uncanny ability to defy gravity whilst creating music.
After a quick break, to pick up on a few business matters and have a well-earned drink (drumming is thirsty work you know!), we were then promoted to the highest level of percussion playing rank, the hand drums and percussion instruments including the likes of tambourines and maracas, to more exotic ones like ‘the wooden frog’ (mistakenly seen as tortoise upon first glance by The Works Director, Andy!) which actually sounded like the ‘ribbit’ noise a real one would make.
A final break was taken for us to reflect on what the day had given us to think about as a team. We realised, when we were broken off into separate groups, just how comfortable we all felt with one another – it wouldn’t have mattered who was in each group, we would still have worked fine together.
We also realised how, after a bit of practice, we sounded much better than we first started; just going to show that you have to have the tenacity to see things through to see the results! Something we try to do every day when we’re at work.
You can learn more about Active Rhythmology by visiting www.activedrumming.co.uk.