Community Projects

Family Musicking with immigrant families in Iceland

Tónagull po Polsku

Ukrainian version of Tónagull

Tónagull po polsku (Tónagull in Polish) was launched in 2019. The music sessions offered to Polish families living in Iceland are weekly group music sessions with parents and children, mostly between 0 and 3 years of age, although all family members are welcome to join the sessions. In the Polish version of the “Tónagull” sessions, the teachers are Polish speaking musicians, and the songs and rhymes are all chosen from the traditional Polish repertoire, while following the same structure and methodology as the Icelandic sessions. Initially, the Polish family music sessions received some start-up funding from the Polish Embassy in Iceland (in 2019) for buying necessary equipment such as appropriate musical instruments. Currently, the program receives support at the municipal level through access to free locales at cultural centres while families pay a small fee for participation as a token of commitment. Teachers are not always compensated for their work and sometimes their contribution is entirely on a voluntary basis.

In response to the influx of Ukrainian refugees in 2022, a Ukrainian version of Tónagull was launched, empowered by a grant from the Icelandic Children’s Culture Fund (Barnamenningarsjóður 2022). Recordings of the Polish and the Ukrainian folk music and rhymes used in the sessions are published on streaming services such as Spotify 

Funding from the Children’s Culture Fund expired in 2023. The Ukrainian family music sessions are continued in the fall of 2024 though support by the Red Cross in Reykjavík by providing location and covering the teacher salaries.