5th anniversary moments & interview with De Correspondent

Our five-year anniversary celebration was beautiful and touching!
We would like to share a few of these moments with you, as well the exciting news that we have been featured in a podcast by De Correspondent, when Lex Bohlmeijer interviewed Sounds of Change founder and director Lucas Dols.

Our five-year celebration event took place on Sunday the 16th of October, in Paradiso Noord - de Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam. We kicked off of proceedings with the Sounds of Change song by HAN (Here and Now), performed by Han van 't Land and the Sounds of Change trainers team.

Our host and presenter for the day was Sabri Saad el Hamus who welcomed our audience in Arabic, Dutch and English before connecting Sounds of Change’s humble beginnings from five years ago, to the present day.

Sounds of Change Academy
The Sounds of Change Academy is a training program in the Netherlands, in which we train people to harness the power of music through the Sounds of Change methodology and mindset, and we are very excited to premiere our new film about the Academy.

Filmmaker Joris Postema and his team made a film about the Sounds of Change Academy in 2021 and 2022. You can watch a teaser in this newsletter though we will share the full film very soon.

Julie Hahn (an Academy alumni who featured in the film) did a fantastic musical interaction with the audience; a great example of having fun and experiencing the power of music together.

Impact research
Our next special guest speaker was Floortje de la Fosse. Floortje's master’s research in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology focussed on the work of Sounds of Change Academy trainees, undertaken in four different asylum centres in the Netherlands and specifically the impact of their workshops on the centres’ children. She shared some of her insights with us during the event.

You can read the impact report right here which also includes a link to the full research.

Trauma Support Ukraine

Anne van den Ouwelant (Trauma Company) talked about the webinars that we’ve been facilitating since 4th March with the Trauma Support Ukraine team; a collaboration between Sounds of Change, the Trauma Company and Safe & Sound. The focus of these webinars is on trauma-sensitive support in acute crisis situations. We work with psycho education, offering practical tools and exercises for stress release, group support session/inter vision, music and art.

Maryana Golovchenko & Martin Fondse
We also played a lot of music with some very special guests. Ukrainian singer Maryana Golovchenko joined us to perform two songs; Obijmy ('Embrace' in Ukrainian) by the famous Ukrainian band Okean Elzy and an old Ukrainian song Marigolds. We also performed these songs in July during an online concert for the participants of our webinars in Ukraine.

Another very special musician who joined us on stage was Martin Fondse, the composer of the fatherland (de componist des vaderlands) of the Netherlands. Martin composed a beautiful song called 'Tomorrow Eyes' which we played with Maryana Golovchenko and the Sounds of Change team.

Raghad Mohammad Yousef
Raghad was one of our honoured guests from Jordan. Raghad was initially a participant during our training sessions with Ruwwad al Tanmeya, one of our partner organisations based in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. From the very beginning we were amazed by Raghad’s positive energy, dedication to self-development and a desire to instill change in her environment. We therefore facilitated exploring her talents in music and art. Raghad shared what music means to her and how opening up helped her to become an artist. Check the stories page on our website to see a short film about Raghad.

Amjad el Mestarihy
Amjad is the co-founder of MedeArts and a Sounds of Change trainer based in Jordan, with whom we've done multiple training sessions in Jordan and Egypt. MedeArts is an initiative established in Irbid city in 2015 by a group of young men and women who work in cultural, artistic and architectural fields, with the aim of creating a decentralised cultural system. This includes applying culture and arts to advocate for societal and human rights issues, and to promote freedom of expression.
Please check their website, they do really fantastic work!

The event was closed by Eduard Nazarski, former director of Amnesty International (NL) and the Dutch Council for Refugees with some beautifully powerful words of hope.

Thank you to the Orchestra of Changemakers for your valued, continued support. And thank you to our wonderful Sounds of Change team for making these first five years happen.

The trainers:
Hashem Kabreet, Sander van Goor, Han van 't Land, Marijn Korff de Gidts.
Organisation:
Gusta Kortweg, Ad van Roosmalen, Lidy Ettema, Lucas Dols
The board:
Jan Willem Dol, Caro Nieuwenhuis, Imre Vellenga, Anouk Nijman, Grietje de Vries
Pictures & Art Work:
Hermen van de Waal, Marieke de Beurs

De Correspondent Interview
We've received a huge present from Lex Bohlmeijer and De Correspondent, who interviewed Lucas Dols in a podcast about the work of Sounds of Change and the lessons we've learned over the past five years. You can read the article (in Dutch) on the De Correspondent website, or listen on Spotify or Soundcloud.