Beatwell at Meyerberg Village with Seniors and Stoler ECE Kindergartners

Imagine a large group of kindergartners and seniors coming together to bond over music On November 12, The Owings Mills Jewish Community Center’s kindergarteners will be going to Weinberg Village, an older adult community to participate in a drum workshop with the seniors, led by teaching artist Jordan Goodman.

Goodman’s company is BEATWELL, which integrates Goodman’s experience as a professional musician and educator with a Master’s in Clinical Psychology. While at Loyola, he researched and practiced the biological and social effects of drumming and music-making. He has introduced this work in Baltimore City and County Schools, community centers, universities, clinics, and festivals to name a few.

The kindergarteners will have the opportunity to drum and then stay and eat lunch with the Weinberg Village seniors.

Group drumming offers an opportunity for each person to contribute as an individual and still connect to the group as a whole. Goodman is a trained as a Healthy Rhythms Facilitator, the world's leading evidence-based, therapeutic drumming protocol. He was recently named one of The Baltimore Sun’s “Ten to Watch Under 30”, and was featured in The Jewish Times.

Culturally, this is an opportunity for the young ones who were born into an age of technology and social media, where everyone seems to be ironically connected in isolation, to actually interact on a positive and, fun, and participatory manner. They will experience what it is like to connect meaningfully with others in the same room without needing to use words.  Art and music have the ability to do this, which is why in ancient cultures music was a daily part of life—in actuality, some cultures still practice this idea.

For many seniors, social isolation is prevalent. They rarely get an opportunity to interact with children, unless they are within their own family. Drumming has the ability to provide a common action to bind us together—no matter age, ethnicity, culture, or religion. And, we all have an innate ability to keep rhythm no matter how young or how old. Rhythm is a universal concept in life and drumming; therefore, a universal form of communication.

The notion is to promote inter-generational communication with emphasis on learning from one another regardless of age. The encore will be a celebratory drumming song to acknowledge the successful interplay and each participant will feel more connected to his/her own abilities and what each has learned at the end of the event. .

http://www.beat-well.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZdLSFf2BF8#t=14

The Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore promotes and strengthens Jewish life and values through communal programs and activities for individuals and families. It is a constituent agency of THE ASSOCIATED Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.

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