Carina Dengler: October 9th – November 16th, 2019

Carina Dengler is a community musician from Munich. She studied “Music in the Community” (MSc) at the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 2012. Since then she’s been running various creative projects with children, teenagers and adults. In her work she creates space for creative individual expression through music, movement and words while at the same time focuses on group dynamics, encouraging mindful interaction, teamwork and personal exchange.

In 2016 she attended the Advanced Community Music Leadership Training run by Musicians without Borders in the Netherlands which offered her many useful tools especially for collaborative songwriting and improvisation. She loves to work with different disciplines, therefore, she’s included musical theatre and Soundpainting, a multidisciplinary live composing sign language, in her work. Inspired by Walter Thompson (the creator of the language) as well as Ceren Oran (a dancer, choreographer and Soundpainter from Istanbul) she’s started to run Soundpainting projects in primary schools in Munich and used it for her work in different refugee centres. She held Soundpainting workshops at the World Alliance for Arts Education Conference in Auckland (2017),  for the Community Music Munich network (2018) and at the Creative Interactions – Dynamic Processes in Group Music Activities Conference in Munich (2019). In January 2019 she became a certified Soundpainter for music level 1.

In between, Carina is also active as musician. She’s collaborated with different musicians in Munich and Dublin (accompanying singers and instrumental soloists; chamber music; piano duets). During her studies she started writing songs on the guitar and in 2015 spent a few months in Dublin as singer songwriter, performing at open stages. Since her main instrument is the piano she would like to move more towards composing on this instrument now. Her first piece written called “Mayaka” orchestrated by Kostas Rekleitis (a composer and musician from Greece) was performed by the Composers’ Orchestra at the University of Edinburgh in 2015. She’s also helped organising a couple of charity concerts in Munich in aid of different organisations where she was performing herself and lead a project choir. A new concert is already planned for 2020.

The Project:

While in Bergen Carina wants to get in touch with local schools to see how they work with children and young people in a creative way. She will visit the Ny-Krohnborg Senter for Oppvekst, Kultur og Idrett and meet other community musicians and music therapists working in Bergen to exchange experiences, share ideas and get inspiration for her work back home. At Høgskulen på Vestlandet she will attend various seminars (improvisation, Soundpainting, composition) run by Jostein Stalheim. One of her main goal is also to compose a few new pieces on the piano.

Photo: Heinz Hollenberger