წაიკითხეთ ეს ქართულად

It is a little surreal to feel so familiar with a place so far from home. As I approached the familiar façade of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire on a mild Friday evening, I recognised Tako Jordania’s voice call out to me as she waved down from the balcony. Stepping into the same room from last year, the constant portraits of Mozart and Beethoven watched once again as we set up our chairs and musical instruments.

Support Session

And then, how wonderful to see familiar faces trickle into the room for our partner support meeting! The seven attendees represented two different cohorts of Distance Learning Programme students, a participant from a supervision programme at the Music Therapy Centre, and Marta Gogolidze who has been a dedicated practitioner since the very first training project from Music as Therapy International in Georgia in 2011. Of course, no project in Tbilisi would be complete without our wonderful interpreter Eliso Gvasalia who accompanied me for the weekend’s activities. The theme of the support meeting was sharing our successes and supporting each other in the challenges of our work. It was easy to find common themes understood by all, which included growing confidence and pride in the work, developing an identity as a practitioner, and transferring skills from theory to practice. It was wonderful to see everyone connecting and exchanging contact details once we closed the meeting.

Intensive Study Training

Having spent the Friday evening catching up with these old friends, it was lovely to then make new acquaintances over the rest of the weekend with the newest cohort of the Distance Learning Programme. These 10 students had travelled from different regions of Georgia to learn together for their Intensive Study Training. All seemed thoroughly engaged for the two days of learning, discussing and music-making together. One student said on day 2 “I couldn’t sleep last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about what we learned. I’ve never felt that way from any training before!”.

I can’t speak highly enough of local music therapist Tako Jordania who is leading the full 8 months of teaching – it is an honour to work alongside her and contribute in a small way to this much bigger process.

With this being our third year of delivering these two days of training together, we have our collaboration honed very nicely, and everything went smoothly. Nevertheless, we continuously learn from the process and the student feedback, and we have new ideas noted for next time.

Tbilisi’s charms have yet to grow old for me. I enjoyed some time around my work just being a visitor; visiting my favourite market, enjoying the food and wine, and finally fulfilling a decade long intention to see a puppet show at the spectacular Gabriadze Theatre. Having had another few months of Georgian lessons since my last visit a year ago, my confidence to speak the language had grown again and brought me many smiles, moments of connection and the odd discounted price! Each time I visit, I am delighted to make new findings as well as revisiting the familiar – both in the place itself and in the work we do there. I look forward to even more discoveries in the future!