DrumPower with Unaccompanied Refugee Minors

Pilot projects of the Freies Musikzentrum München eV
sponsored by the Cultural Department of the City of Munich

Munich
Late 2014, the program «DrumPower for violence prevention, social integration and empowerment in schools» was offered as a pilot project in several institutions for unaccompanied refugee minors and was modified for this specific context conditions.

The cultural department of the City of Munich allowed the funding of four project groups. Responsible for the management, planning, supervision and coordination of the projects was Dr. Andreas Wölfl from the Institute of Music Therapy at the Freies Musikzentrum Munich (FMZ).

Fig. 1: DrumPower-Project-team with A. Engl (cultural department of Munich 2. from the left), E. Weber (Board of Freies Musikzentrum e.V. 3. from the left) and A.Wölfl (backline middle).

Many of the young people enjoyed the various opportunities to drum, to improvise and to make music together. In the project hours they got plenty of opportunities to express themselves playfully while making music together and to feel pleasure and forget about stress. Some of the Young people used the chance even to play music from their home or to express some depressing feelings like sadness or anger. Language difficulties were overcome when making music together and everybody was welcome in the group. Through the attentive guidance of specially trained coaches also problematic moods could be handeled in the drumpower sessions. Resources of the participants for emotional stabilization could be taken up. At the end of projects small performances were carried out in all facilities with great vitality, like the audience did enjoy the actors.

Fig. 2: Project-team Münchner-Kindl-Heim (S. Fricker and H. Roisch)

Difficulties in the projects emerged especially if the projects were not carried out in the facilities of the refugees and the youth should autonomously travel a greater distance to get to the projects. Here both showed weaknesses in the self-organization of young people as well as in the organization of the institutions, that often were not staffed adequately for the abundance of care responsibilities. Ultimately, the requirement that young people should come to the projects place turned out to be excessive demands. Therefore it is decided for the planning of further project to make the DrumPower-Projects available in the residential institutions or in schools. Only after this first phase of the project it makes sence to imagine for young people who stay for a longer time in one region, to invite them to other places to take part in further musical or preventive-therapeutic music projects.

Fig. 3: Project-team Fideliopark (R. Richter, D. Westphäling, H. Roisch)

Overall, the participating adolescents and caregivers gave mainly a positive feedback on the drum power projects. The evaluation of projects indicated primarily such elements as important for successful project implementation: the low-threshold access to the drum and music improvisation, the flexible design of the seesions according to the needs and the current dynamics of the group and the stabilizing and resource-activating procedure of coach teams. Moreover, it turned out to be important to seek in difficult situations and dynamics together for constructive solutions. Therefore the DrumPower-trainer could draw on differentiated elaborated project methods.

Fig. 4: scientific evaluation (D. Westphäling, J. Zerbe)

A continuation and expansion of DrumPower projects for unaccompanied refugee minors is desired by many young people and employees of the institutions. This idea is supported by the Department of Culture in Munich. Another project with young people at Controps e.V. already could be performed, promoted by the Lions Club Munich Karl Valentin. Currently, a follow-up project takes place in a first recording device of the Youth Office of the City of Munich in Munich Aubing. The Freies Musikzentrum e.V. hopes for the near future to attract more sponsors in the coming years to offer a continuation and expansion of the DrumPower-projects for the wellbeing and emotional stability of unaccompanied refugee minors.