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Youth Participant Workshops:

Concurrent with the work undertaken by the Creative/Research Team and the Artist Participants,  a Youth Participant Workshop took place at Inuksuk High School, from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. from October 17-19, 2006. The workshop leader was Andrew Cheng, dramaturg working with the Common Plants project and a senior undergraduate student at York University. The twenty eight student participants were drawn from the class of Inuksuk High School teacher Mrs. Renata Solski. Following is a report based on Cheng’s observations and documentation of the process he undertook.

October 17th:

The Youth Participant Workshop began with Andrew Cheng introducing himself and explaining the goals and context of the Common Plants project. Next, he initiated a group warm up comprised of exercises focussing on an exploration of  the concept comfort.  Cheng asked the student to walk around the room, ensuring that they were constantly in motion. Each participant was challenged to randomly select another student and then function as their shield as the movement continued. Further, the students were told that while they needed to stay close to the person they were shielding, they must not permit the shielded person to know by whom they were being protected. In the second installment of this exercise, the students were asked to choose two other people: one would be an enemy and the other would be the dependent they had to shield. The person choosing had to maintain contact with their dependent  while creating distance from the enemy. 

One of the goals that was realized with this warm up exercise was that the students recognized the difficulty of the task and acknowledged that undertaking responsibility for the safety of another person meant, oftentimes, that their own comfort and even safety had been compromised. The act of generosity involved in caring for another being became one of the topics in the discussion that ensued.

As well, one student, during the exercise, raised a particularly difficult issue, asking what might happen if the dependent and the enemy were the same person.

During the discussion, the group considered individual notions of comfort. Asked to delineate their idea of comfort in one sentence or image, some of the participants responded with answers that included family, grandfather’s smell, friends.

The second part of this initial session introduced Dr. Rudakoff’s “There are stories about…” exercise. This time, “There are stories about…” focussed on the lives of the students. Cheng clarified for the participants that though on the surface, their quotidien reality might appear to be similar if not the same, that each of them would experience this similarity through their own experiential filter.

One of the most poignant and succinct “There are stories about…” came from a student who simply declared “There are stories about alcohol.”

For the next day, Cheng asked the students to bring in an object from home that represented comfort to them. They were also told that the object would become something that belonged to “Ashley” a character who they were going to collaboratively create. Cheng explained that the object should be something that each student would permit others to touch, hold, examine. At this point, Cheng also explained that the object representing comfort would not represent each student, but rather the concept of comfort.

One of the goals of this portion of the creative exercise was to use the metaphor of a community of objects to collectively respresent one person.

October 18th:

As the students entered the workshop room, still informally chatting and milling about, Cheng asked them to unobtrusively deposit the object brought to represent comfort in a central location. This was done in an effort that no one object should be identified with any of the participants. Cheng also indicated that if anyone had brought a personal object that they were not comfortable passing around or having manipulated, that they ought not to place it in the object area. The group reconstituted in a discussion circle and Cheng explained that the objects were now to be affiliated with a character to be collaboratively shaped that would be called “Ashley”. As part of this initial work in the day,  each student was also invited to declare how they felt currently, and how they wanted to feel at the end of the day.

Once the group had settled into the discussion, Cheng asked for volunteers to enter the circle and choose an object at random. Each student held up the chosen object (without identifying who had brought it to the workshop or why) and the group explored what each object signified and how it might represent and aspect of the character of Ashley.

The workshop participants then configured a  character profile using the objects as provocation:  a phone calling card; a woman’s ring; a football, a Sponge Bob toy, a video game controller, a family photograph, a torn pair of shoes.

The Ashley character profile developed to incorporate the following information inspired by the chosen objects: Ashley is female; has many names; is a teenager; first fell in love at the age of sixteen, was born in a town outside Iqaluit; is lonely; is uncomfortable at home; once found comfort caring for a squirrel.

At the end of the workshop, Cheng was able to identify dominant themes in the discussions and the exercises: where is Ashely's home? Who does Ashely have to protect? What is Ashley's dream? These would form the basis of the next day’s work.

October 19th:

In a continuation of the previous day’s work, employing the prevalent themes, Cheng asked the group to devise two physical image tableaux, both of which were to involve all the students.

In the first tableau, entitled “Strength”, one student stood in the middle of the room, with the others surrounding him in friendship and solidarity.

The second tableau, entitled “Fear”, showed one student kneeling on the ground praying while another lay in front of him dead. Several students took the roles of family members surrounding the kneeling man. Three others positioned themselves as attackers: one with a gun, one ready to strike the kneeling man, and the last jeering at his sadness.

The remainder of the students then completed the tableau by surrounding  the attackers, grabbing their clothing to hold them back and thus preventing the imminent attack. Two other students stood away from the group: one stood with his back turned to the event, the other faced the event, holding a camera.

Cheng questioned the student playing the photographer as to what role he was playing in the tableau and the response was: “This picture will be used in his defence.”

Cheng then asked the group if the man was a criminal and the student playing the dead man sat bolt upright and responded vehemently:  “No. Who says he’s a criminal?”

The next stage of the exercise brought movement into the tableaux. In the second tableau, “Fear”, the family moved to surround the kneeling, praying man and his attackers were subdued.

Renata Solski, then sectioned the students into four groups for the subsequent stages of the exercise. Each group was tasked to create their own tableau with Ashley as the main character in the narrative.

Group One was assigned the tableau theme of “Home”. The initial image they created showed a man sitting on top of two other men in the moment before he is about to be kidnapped by two intruders. Cheng, Solski and Teaching Assistant Travis Brown (who participanted on Day One and Day Two and observed on Day Three) worked with each group to evolve their tableaux and in a subsequent version of Group One’s interpretation of “Home” the man remained sitting on two others, surrounded by three intruders all of whom were pointing guns at him.

Group Two created a tableau entitled “Shield” which showed a woman protecting a lonely figure who was on her knees, being attached by two men and a woman. Cheng asked what the three attackers symbolized and the group responded “Judgment, Neglect, and Disregard.”

Group Three devised a tableau entitled “Dream” which presented a woman surrounded by her personal visions of fame.

Group Four developed a tableau entitled “Who I have to take care of…” in which a woman was represented as naked and lying on the ground. Covering her, presenting a barrier against the elements and against danger was another woman. Above them, a man and a woman grappled for power.

Conclusion:

The three day workshops, concurrent with the Artist Participants’ work with the Creative/Research Team, offered some insights that continue to inform all stages and components of the Common Plants project: the root systems which feed the plants in this project are far-reaching, not always continguous and allow for both constant revitalization as well as flexibility with respect to the often extreme challenges of time, place and environment.

In this segment of the garden we are building, the shared themes and common fears of substance abuse and loss of loved ones were of paramount importance. The student participants in the Youth Workshop were committed, open, creatively engaged and intrepid. Along with Solski and Travis Brown, Cheng was able to elicit and then evolve creative responses that incorporated the Common Plants work and methodologies into the daily curriculum that Solski has implemented in an environment that is not always hospitable.

As with the Youth Workshop in Cape Town in July 2006, while initially there was a degree of reticence on the part of some Youth Participants, by the end of the workshops there was full and whole-hearted participation, and the resulting work more than met the challenge of difficult themes and issues that hold real significance in the lives of the students.

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