ABOUT US
Beginnings...
One Heart Drummers started in 2015 when our founding members decide to combine their skills and experience taking a few drums, (literally a few drums and buckets and sticks) along to a health and wellbeing event at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales. People really connected with what we were doing, and a few great conversations lead to involvement at other events and festivals including the Heart of the Valley show at Pontardawe.
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From there it was decided that a monthly drum circle was needed to allow for opportunities to connect with all the people that we were meeting at the various events. One Heart Drummers had landed!
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Interim.....
Over the next four years we continued with our monthly drum circle and attending various other events, some schools work, with community groups and businesses inviting us to bring some drumming to their organisations.
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Meanwhile we were researching, learning and developing our ethos​, but our work was very small. As we approached 2020, we had gained enough feedback to know that One Heart Drummers could go much further in what we do, but little did we know that the blip that was the pandemic was about to hit.
Plans on the backburner, but we wrote a drumming book and started looking for what we could do to relaunch One Heart Drummers.
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Finding our rhythm....
As restrictions began to ease, One Heart Drummers landed a few grants and started 2022 with a bang!
Our brand new family drumming session called Rhythm and Play was started, quickly followed by Echos, for care home settings. Lots more has been development and drumming for wellbeing, samba drumming and a sound experiments sessions are now regular features.
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We had people asking about drum fixes, so we now fix drums, our schools and business work along with care homes, play groups, community organisations, festivals and other events has seen us travel from St Davids in west Wales, to Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in North Wales. We have been to festivals in Birmingham, Builth Wells, Carmarthen and Cornwall and worked with communities from Milford have to Bath. A lot of our work has been focused around the Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthen areas, at places like Waterfront Museum, Swansea Arena, but also with many community groups from cubs to dementia support settings.
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In the past few years we have now established our Samba band, with regular performances and involvement with events like, Swansea Christmas Parade and our own Big Rumble event each year.
From our small beginnings, we now drum with over 6000 people a year and with our samba band and parades we have performed for over 60,000, but its still the greatest joy to see someone meet us at an event and say they have no rhythm, yet following a little help and some instruction, within a few minutes, they are drumming!
We are looking forward to drumming and making music with many more people and we are continually developing more drumming or music sessions, learning and listening to everyone we connect with. It’s been a great few year since our relaunch and we are now a fully fledged charity looking for what we can do to connect more people to drumming and music making. Lets see what comes next!
