Pulse of the Place samba drumming band is part of A.R.Ts Afternoon SCIO; Charity no SC045057
Pulse of the Place.... Our Story (part I)

The Pulse story started to rumble way back in 1998.. A project funded through Art City and conceived by their creative director, Mary Walters, brought Mat Clements to the Royal Mile Primary to run a short samba drumming project. The project culminated in a performance at the Mela Festival (at Meadowbank Stadium) led by Mat in his gold jacket with his new children’s samba band, ‘PULSE OF THE CITY’. The band included a primary 3 girl, Sarah Kelly. This was where Mat and Sarah met and it has been a relationship that helped drive ‘Pulse’ throughout its lifetime so far...

Given a successful appearance at the Mela Festival, Stevi Manning (City of Edinburgh Council) picked up on the Samba drumming and placed into the City of Edinburgh Council’s Go 4 It summer programme at Duncan Place Resource Centre, which led to Rohan Seilman’s first involvement with samba drumming, as Rohan was the Community Education Worker at Duncan Place. By this time the Mela Festival had moved to Pilrig Park and again Pulse of the City performed at the Mela. The next few years saw continued performances at the Mela. The difference now was that Rohan had negotiated with Mat and the BIG DRUM ADVENTURE to run a regular weekly samba drumming group, it was within this group that Sarah met Mairi, Jeanne and Hazel. By 2004 Pulse of the City had become a regular performer at the Mela Festival. In 2005 the BIG DRUM ADVENTURE funding came to an end. OLI FURNESS the regular tutor kept a small group going for a while and also ran a self funded course to encourage new drummers. Rohan started to work with the small numbers that were left and formed the first BEAT IT band which was a samba drumming with guitar band.

In June 2006 came the event that was to change the course of Pulse.