imagining new futures

2 weeks in South Africa, old friends, new friends, new workshops and an exciting new centre to work with

The Re-imagining festival in Grahamstown was part of the annual National Arts Festival exploring new perspectives on the environment and social change in South Africa. I always find when I visit this beautiful country that people are full of new ideas, new ways of looking at issues. Visiting RSA challenges me to look at what I bring to sessions and inspires me to find my own new perspectives and gives me new things to think about

Re-imagining addressed sustainability education by opening up spaces for discussion, space to listen think, talk and share. More of their work can be found at the Sustainability Commons

My role: to work with local children on building stories, not with serious outcomes but to help children (and anyone who wanted to join in) to let their imaginations go, to find a degree of imaginative freedom and confidence in their own value as thinking creative people

So we used our immediate environment for inspiration and shaped new stories, made animals with our fingers, shaped characters out of leaves and scrap card and found adventures everywhere from the centre's leaf-shaped pool to the caves of a rockery and a recess in a wall

and in the quiet spaces between sessions, and between shows and exhibitons in the wider festival,  I let my own imagination wander

1. Head down a hole

Full of sand and hope

Dreaming of aardvarks

2. The aloe lifts fire

To a pale, cloudless sky.

Pause.

Embrace a flower, ignite your spirit