Drumroots Workshop at Ansel Group Mental Health Clinic

For the second time we travelled across to Nottingham to deliver workshops at an Ansel Group clinic; a clinic for men with personality disorders who may have additional complex needs and have challenged other service provision. The two ‘Taster’ workshops were sessions designed to see how well the patients responded to and enjoyed our drumming workshops, and beneficial they were. As with all our workshops, the sessions were tailored to the ability and enthusiasm of the participants; both sessions were very successful with a much higher number of patients attending the second workshop. During the sessions we were able to able to work though djembe technique, teach traditional rhythms and eventually we encouraged all participants to try their hand at ‘freestyle’ soloing and to create their own rhythms in a final ‘jam session’. These workshops have been an enjoyable experience for us and we hope to develop further our regular work with the Ansel Group and in the mental health sector.