We are the “Blumenstrauss” (Bunch of Flowers) Group, an inclusive rock band from the Offenbach am Main area. The sponsor of our project is the Disability Support Service in the city and district of Offenbach. We are five musicians with and without disabilities. We have been around as a band since mid-2019, starting in the middle of the Corona pandemic. We have finally been able to devote 2022 to bringing our self-penned songs to live stages.

The focus of the conceptual work in the band project is collaborative decision making in as diverse a form as possible: the direction in which genres, moods, lyrics and energy of the pieces of music go is explored and decided together. In doing so, great importance is always given to breaking down barriers such as existing sensory impairments and cognitive handicaps, all with the aim of achieving participation in the most comprehensive way possible. For example, certain aids that facilitate improvisation with tonal and percussive musical instruments play an important part here, as does the expertise of the experienced social education worker Alexander Hagen, who has been accompanying musical projects in the field of integration assistance for years and coaches the individual members within the project.

The generous donation from the Hans Thomann Foundation will help us to organize our live performances more easily in the future. Part of the donation was a new mixing console. We can use this to also mix our performance ourselves if suitable technology is not available on site. The fact that we often bring our own system and now have a lot of instruments to transport was always quite a big effort for us. Thanks to the foundation’s resources, it will be much easier for us to implement our live shows in the future, as we can now store our cymbals and cables, for example, but also stands and microphone mounts in suitable bags and cases. Finally, we can transport the instruments together, saving time and effort. Before, we had to carry a lot of things individually. We can also pack and store the instruments in our bus, with which we travel to the performances, much more safely now. We are very happy about this and are very much looking forward to the next performances!

Andreas, guitarist of the band, says, “A lot of stuff goes into the cases now, which we would otherwise just have to stack in the back of the bus. That’s really cool, because it makes it much easier for us to pack the bus when driving to the performances!”

In the photos you can see that the band has already designed the donated Thon cases with spray paint in graffiti style, so that there is no confusion about who owns what at events with several bands!

In autumn 2022, the Hans Thomann Foundation made a generous donation of materials to the project “Gruppe Blumenstrauss” of the Disability Support Service in the city and district of Offenbach. We would like to express our sincere thanks for this support.

Author:
Alexander Hagen
December 2022