Residency: Day one
We didn’t know what to expect, we had planned as best as we could, and Kate had told us to relax, get an early night, be prepared. We never really got a good night’s sleep all week, so being in bed before one was quite the achievement!
We got there with plenty of time, but were then delayed due to them needing to X-Ray everything in. We went to meet the group and had only a few people.
We got started, and only had around twenty minutes of a session to deliver. This worked out ok and we expected these delays in some way, we were just hopeful that we could have got there on time so that we could start as we wanted.
The day went really well, we met a warm and generous group of women who all seemed excited to be there. We had two Young Offenders originally in the group, but they did not even come back after lunch. I was really interested in how one of the YOs responded to us, it was very much in a way that they were the student and we were the teachers, having short attention spans and being pretty moody, this is to be expected I guess with it being such an institutionalised environment, they were likely not all that long out of a school system and could only relate to it in a certain way.
The group were really engaged and moved through the material at their own pace, nothing felt too rushed, and the groups were in synch in getting to similar places at similar times. Our introduction of the image above went really well, and the group took apart the image in many interesting ways which resulted in lovely performance moments.
Learning points and observations:
-The structure of a workshop that we create outside of the room has to be able to adapt to who and what is going on in the room.
-Talking and evaluation needs to come from everyone, not just the facilitators. The discussion and analysis could be deemed as being pointless if the group don’t go anywhere with it.
-Let go: Of directed ideas, let the group find the creativity in the work, let go of facilitation, all three voices don’t always needs to be in the room!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
No Responses Yet to “Residency: Day one”