Walking with Others

 

Walking with Others

I was lucky enough to spent last weekend at The Eden Project in Cornwall as a participant on their ‘Big Lunch Extras’ programme. Eden itself is an inspiring place, the vision and determination of the originator Tim Smit shines through.

Beautiful sky and biomes.

Big Lunch Extras was created as an optimistic and practical response to the growing number of community-minded people who got involved with ‘The Big Lunch’. This was an Eden initiative, which encouraged ‘as many people as possible to sit down and have lunch with their neighbours on one day.’

Eden has some magical quiet areas.

The weekend was packed with wonderful opportunities to learn, network and be supported in our own projects. Stories were told of exciting and worthy projects being set up and running all over the country. I found the weekend to be inspiring, engaging, fruitful and most surprisingly, tender.

Walking the labyrinth together.

Real stories told of how and why people were inspired to make a difference. They were thoughtful and honest. I felt very touched to have experienced the ‘collective genius of the community’, which Rob Hopkins, the initiator of the Transition Network spoke about 8 years ago.

 

Detail of the huge seed at the centre of the Core.

The Core building was designed around the stone 'seed'.

One of the first stories I heard was told by the South East area ‘catalyst’, Rich and it set the scene for the whole weekend. He explained how his daughter loved the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar so much that he had to read it every night. As she got older she started to ask ‘why?’ to everything. When she asked why the caterpillar got so big and fat and built a cocoon around him, Rich had to ‘Google’ it as he realised he didn’t understand why a caterpillar could change either.

The floor has a tile pattern representing ripples.

What he discovered was the caterpillar has ‘imaginal cells’ within it. These cells ‘wake up’ at a specific stage in its life cycle and become drawn to each other. When enough of them connect they are able to direct the future of the caterpillar which then transforms into a butterfly.

This was a metaphor for all of us in that room. We could be seen as the imaginal cells that have ‘woken up’ and could now come together to create transformative change in our communities.

Theatre of Place

Sue Hill, the Art Director of Eden talked to us about her company ‘Wildworks’ and what she referred to as the theatre of place: the connection between people and place. She told us of many events that were put on in communities and her wish to ‘find wonder as there is always treasure to be found’.

Paths and mounds topped with Snowdrops.

She reminded us of how in the darkest months people are willing to go outside and be involved in an event if there is fire. Light and lanterns have always been used to illuminate the dark in a spectacular way, it creates a focus and ‘touches something deep’. She loves her work and talked about shared experiences, something that I too work with. 

 

Sunny Catkins.

She explained that creating something temporary, together in the community, then burning it, can be great as the memory lives on in the heads and hearts of the group.

She expressed herself in an inspiring way and reminded us to start all projects with love. She told us that when we approach projects and community with love, we create a powerful energy, one of awe and wonder, of recognition and appreciation for being in this extraordinary time and place: right here, right now.

Role Models

Sue Hill could be seen as a role model, she was full of enthusiasm and knowledge for her work and other projects. I wonder what she would describe herself as.

Temporary art created by another participant .

I am many things and I have many roles, in the past I have been criticsized as being ‘fickle’!. So, it was a relief to see another creative mind struggle and overcome this ‘pigeon holing’ of roles. Anne-Marie Culhane, facilitated a couple of workshops over the weekend, one of her first presentation slides was a page of text. It started with ‘In my practice at different moments I am…’

This was a revelation. The page was full of describing words, words ending in ‘ing’, such as painting and exploring, facilitating and performing. They filled the page and described her approach and practice perfectly.

 

The path in the Mediterranean biome.

I may have to do this as an exercise for myself. In listing all of my activity, I think I will find more clarity.

Writing

One of my descriptions could be writing. I write this blog once a week. It is essential to my momentum at getting the walking project moving forward. I will start to reorganise the content from these blogs this week and plan the book that I am going to write. I want to write it before the summer. I know what it will be like, I have a vision of it finished, and this will also protect the content as my IP (Intellectual Property).

 

Cartoonists made postcards of us and our ideas, to share.

I met many people at the weekend who gave me advice and encouragement with my project and book. I also had a mini film workshop, which was great.

Primroses in bright sun.

That could be a real asset to improve upon in the future. I have combined walking and creating fire events with local people over the last three years, these do create a theatre of place that embeds memories and shared experiences, but now I could film them too and increase the audience and hopefully inspire others to do something more, with love.

At the end of the trip, we went to the sea.

(I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)