Annabel Jansen's Colleagues at The Boom Bus
Annabel Jansen's Contact Details
Amsterdam,North Holland,Netherlands
The Boom Bus
Annabel Jansen's Company Details
It's the Boom Bus' mission to bring music to children from conflict areas. These children have experienced more hardship, devastation, and violence than any child should have to in a thousand lifetimes. Since the beginning of the refugeecrisis, thousands fled violence and have become stuck in camps and refugee centers across the continent. In often overcrowded and overburdened facilities, children are deprived of any form of cultural education or stimulation. The Boom Bus is there to help these children.How so?As well as the essentials for survival such as food and shelter, children need to be able to play, express themselves and be interactive with others their age in order to develop into healthy human beings. We believe music is a very powerful tool for this development as it can help children to heal the emotional wounds of war, boost creativity and stimulate compassionate communication.The Boom Bus provides an interactive, educating, and lasting musical experience. Utilizing the potential of the interactive instrument Boomwhackers, the Boombus visits refugee camps and emergency shelters along a route from Amsterdam to Athens. At each location they host boomwhacker workshops, music lessons, and organize performances for the children and families. They also facilitate workshops for adult refugees and aid workers on site to help improve the skills of lesson giving and workshop hosting, so as they move on to a next spot on the route, the music lessons for children will continue to take place.The instruments they work with are colourful, melodic percussion tubes that are expressive, easy to play, cross cultural, portable, colourful and most importantly fun.Play of the instrument takes place in groups and focuses on social interplay, dynamics and tracking of simple rhytms and melodies. The inherent communal nature of playing with the colourful tubes enhances children's social skills and cognitive musical ability.