PLAY GROUND – Opening conference 5th-6th of May 2021

Norway presenting: The first of five conferences on social inclusion through music. 
 
PLAY GROUND – Opening conference 5th-6th of May 2021
 
Play Ground taps into the Norwegian music scene to listen in on how music as an everyday activity can create sustainable structures to address local and global challenges, such as migration and health. Join these two digital lectures to learn more about how to involve and include children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and how to share and experience the power and pleasure of making music.
 
Wednesday May 5th 10:00 CET   
Community Music therapy in child welfare work – bridging provision, protection and participation, Viggo Krüger, Associate Professor, The Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, Norway
Music, Health and Policy, Ole Kristian Einarsen, PhD candidate, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway
Q&A, Rachel Louis, Producer, Bergen International Festival, Norway
 
Thursday May 6th 10:00 CET
Fargespill - bringing music from the world to Bergen and Norway, Ole Hamre, Artistic Director, and Irene Kinunda Afriyie, Artistic Consultant, Kaleidoscope/Fargespill, Norway
Q&A, Rachel Louis, Producer, Bergen International Festival, Norway
 
PLAY GROUND is initiated by five members of the Europe Jazz Network from Belgium, France, Romania, Italy and Norway. Through PLAY GROUND, the project partners aim to boost awareness and knowledge on the use of music in projects with and for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.  
 
Programme
May 5th, 10am – 12 noon (central European time)
Community music therapy in child welfare work – bridging provision, protection and participation, Viggo Krüger, Associate Professor, University of Bergen
Viggo Krüger will present a paper based on the story of a Community music therapy project called “Come Closer”, conducted in Norway. Come Closer was established in 2003 when Krüger was employed by a child welfare organisation where there was a strong willingness to explore music therapy. The organisation wanted to see if activities including music could benefit the health and well-being of children and adolescents in their institutions. Several of the adult social workers in the organisation had a strong interest in music, a factor that really helped establishing this project, and they contributed through playing and singing with the young people in addition to acting as an audience. Music became an integral part of the agenda at the institutions and interdisciplinary staff meetings included discussions on how to use music as a way to create a better dialogue with the children/adolescents, but also potential challenges and pitfalls - for example, with regard to negative lyric content in genres such as hip-hop or black metal.
 
Music, Health and Policy, Ole Kristian Einarsen, PhD Candidate, University of Bergen
Ole Kristian Einarsen will give a brief introduction of his newly started PhD project: Music, Health and Policy – A qualitative research study to gain access to unaccompanied migrant children’s voices and experiences, with arts-based activities, both as informal leisure activities in everyday life, and as institutionally organised, adult-led activities.  
Einarsen’s PhD research project will explore how music activities and everyday use of music can provide sustainable structures to address global challenges such as migration and health with particular focus on music, health and related policies in the context of unaccompanied migrant children. The project is taking place through music activities with adolescences living in the Spanish exclave of Melilla in Northern Africa. He will also talk about the privilege of defining music as a social activity and how this aspect enables access to social structures, well-being and mental health.
Q&A I Rachel Louis, Producer, Bergen International Festival
Viggo Krüger, Ole Kristian Einarsen and Rachel Louis. Attendees are welcome to comment and ask questions. 
 
May 6th, 10am – 12 noon (central European time)
Fargespill (Kaleidoscope) – bringing music from the world to Bergen and Norway, Ole Hamre, founder & Irene Kinunda Afriyie, administrative and artistic consultant 
Ole Hamre and Irene Kinunda Afriyie will present Fargespill, a project that allows children and young people with roots from all corners of the world to take part in a grand performance, gathering up to 100 people on stage. Apart from that, there’s nothing typical about Fargespill. The participants, aged between 7 and 25, draw their energy from meeting new people and making new friends. The positive assumption that everyone has something valuable to give, creates a sense of achievement and has resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and groundbreaking performances since they began in 2004. The Fargespill-method is resource-oriented where everyone has something to contribute. We should ask each other «what do you have?», not «what are you missing?»The philosophy explores what happens when people dig for gold within each other, instead of looking for dirt.
Fargespill debuted in Bergen in 2004, and has since evolved and multiplied into a great number of performances at various festivals and major public events, and is licensed to several municipalities across Norway.
Q&A I Rachel Louis, Producer, Bergen International Festival
Ole Hamre, Irene Kinunda Afriyie and Rachel Louis. Attendees are welcome to comment and ask questions.
 
Speakers
Viggo Krüger, associate professor at The Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. Krüger recently published a book for Barcelona publisher on the subject music therapy and child welfare called Music therapy in Child Welfare – Bridging Provision, Protection and Participation. He is also a fulltime member in Norwegian-Grammy winner band called Pogo pops. 
https://www.barcelonapublishers.com/Music-Therapy-in-Child-Welfare
 
Ole Kristian Einarsen, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen, music therapist and musician. As a music therapist, Ole Kristian has worked with adolescents at an alternative school for pupils who, for different reasons, have chosen to quit the state school system. Einarsen has also worked in a prison playing music with inmates.
 
Ole Hamre, musician, composer and founder of Fargespill. Irene Kinunda Afriyie is a former member of the Fargespill ensemble, and she now has a leading role within the organization managing the performers. 
https://fargespill.no/in-english/
 
Rachel Louis, Curator and Producer at Bergen International Festival. Located in London until 2016. In the UK she primarily focused on Arts and Health, collaborating on long term projects with The National Portrait Gallery, London Symphony Orchestra, Tate, Royal Academy of Music, British Film Institute, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Trinity Laban Conservatoire. She initiated artist residencies which worked to support therapeutic goals through creative activities. In 2016 Rachel moved from London to Bergen, Norway and established a socially engaged arts programme for BIF called Festspillkollektivet (The Festival Collective), which provides long term creative collaborations with diverse communities throughout Bergen. 
 
PLAY GROUND is initiated by five members of the Europe Jazz Network: 
  • Handelsbeurs Concertzaal, Belgium
  • Banlieues Bleues Festival, France
  • Jazz in the Park / Fapte, Romania
  • TAM Tutta un’Altra Musica, Italy
  • East Norway Jazz Centre, Norway  

Through PLAY GROUND, the project partners aim to boost awareness and knowledge of the use of music in projects with and for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Through workshops with local and international artists, in cooperation with local organisations and schools, and using accessible methods, the PLAY GROUND partners will use music both as a playful and powerful tool for self-expression, allowing participants to gain confidence as an individual and as a group, build bridges and create intercultural dialogue. PLAY GROUND will also serve as an international learning platform where methodological and academic expertise on organising music projects with underprivileged children and young people will be gathered, evaluated and shared. The opening conference of PLAY GROUND in May 2021 is the first of five expertise meetings. PLAY GROUND is supported by Creative Europe.
 
Register here: playgroundproject.eu
Download the PROGRAMME/INVITATION in PDF