Saturday, October 12, 2013

McDonnell/Russell Protocol - Drumming with Librarians in Sioux Falls and St. Cloud

Though my colleague, Keith Russell, came up with the idea that our "percussion-based experiential exercises" maybe constitute a new protocol that builds on previous group-drumming protocols, I think it should be called "Russell-McDonnell Protocol".  Keith has done a lot of work in using experiential exercises for staff development and change management at his institution, University of Kansas.

That being said, I think the two conference sessions we did in Sioux Falls and St. Cloud over the last couple of weeks went very well.  Keith and I have done drumming sessions at librarian conferences together three times now (Keith has done more than that solo), and each time seems to go better than the last.  It was a fun time, and the participants at each had some very neat learnings which they shared with us.  They talked about their feelings, how the drumming served as a metaphor, and one person said how great it was to see people smiling and experiencing joy!

Two other highlights of the conference were a session on Mindfulness practice/meditation in the workplace, by Jenny Sippel and John Daniels of Minneapolis Community and Technical College.  I was excited to learn that MCTC Library has implemented a meditation room in a room that needed to be repurposed in the library--go MCTC!  A session on music-making activities with public library patrons and children's programming, as well as a presentation from a talent firm that services libraries (for cultural, art, music, and entertainment programming in libraries) reminded me that libraries are not just about books anymore!

I am excited for the next opportunity to facilitate another event like this with my colleague Keith Russell!  We'll see how the evaluations for the conference session turned out.

SDLA/NDLA/MPLA Tri Conference drumming

MLA Drumming session - St. Cloud, MN






Saturday, April 27, 2013

More drums added to the Drum Resource Pages!

See above "Drum Resource Pages" for some very cool and unusual drums and other percussion instruments.

All of the photos and text were taken at the awesome Rhythm Discovery Center in downtown Indianapolis, IN.  If you are ever visiting Indianapolis, visit this little museum.  It is a treasure, and they have an awesome collection!