Hello again research friends, enthusiasts, and those who would like to become one!
I would also like to wish you all a happy new year in Hertfordshire, UK!
Shortly before Christmas we had got ethical clearance for doing the Songlines course in the UK 2023, so I, once again, visited the UK to start getting people enthusiastic about our project. For this reason, we organized two talks at local Parkinson’s groups in Hertfordshire.
The first one took place at the Hampson Park Community Centre in Stevenage, which is the same venue as for our course Songlines. Lovely Jane invited me to give the talk, and I have to admit that I have been quite nervous, but luckily Penny, who is another PhD student at UH, was there to support me, thank you very much! 🙂
We decided it would be nice to go to the talk together and introduce ourselves properly because besides our brilliant facilitator, Maria, Penny and I will be helping to run the course. As all of you know that music is quite a crucial part of our research project, and for Songlines is going to be a music and movement course, we thought it might be funny to introduce ourselves via a favorite piece of music. Here are the two pieces, and I leave it to you to guess which one belongs to who 😉
I think the attendees liked our tunes, immediately the ice was broken, and my nervousness was gone. It really was a great experience, and I felt like everybody enjoyed themselves. It was also fantastic to see that the people liked what we are doing, and they would very much like to be a part of it. I think they especially liked our little dance exercise…oh sorry, I meant to write “moving to music” exercise 😉
On Thursday 19th of January, Penny and I went to the West Herts branch of Parkinson’s UK to give the talk again. This time my supervisor, Lucy, was joining us because she knows most of the attendees. The second talk was also a wonderful experience, and the people were just as lovely as the Big Movers. The response to our project and the Songlines course was amazing and I hope some of the attendees will take part in it.
I’m flying back home today, but I will be back in the UK by the end of February. That is when my year abroad starts officially and I’m very much looking forward to it! 🙂
Thank you for reading this blog, and please feel free to leave some comments. I am very interested in your opinion. I can’t wait to keep you posted with all the exciting things going to happen.
Take care and see you for the next read!
Hi Marietta, I have just discovered your blogs after all this timeand I have just enjoyed reading all of them this afternoon. What an interesting and exciting time you have had since you began working on this fantastic project.
Meeting Sabrina, along with Toni, Lisbeth and the other participants last year in Lucerne and joining in the last Workshop you did was great fun and I enjoyed the conversation over lunch afterwards.
Since then, you have settled in to your new life in Hertfordshire and suddenly we are about to begin the MMMP course on 22nd May! I am really looking forward to all that it brings as are my fellow participants.
Last week’s special evening in the Concert Hall at HSLU was such a wonderful experience and I felt very honoured to be invited to take part. You all worked so hard to make the evening the success it truly was! It was great to meet with the Team again and to spend more time getting to know people.
See you and Penny next week at Hampson Park !
Me again! Songlines is a wonderful, joyous and very helpful programme and none of us want it to end!
We are having a lot of fun, learning lots from you, Maria, Lindsay and Andrew! Penny beavers away making sure everything is in the right place at the right time, but we don’t see her doing it!
We have 2 more sessions, the time has gone by so very quickly. I have my fingers crossed that Maria will come up with a continuation of some kind soon!
Thank you! xxxx