Getting to know each other

I listen.

Introductions: The children, teacher and support staff take turns to come to the camera. I hear each person’s name and something they like.

Uncertainty and beginning to figure out this mode of communication 

(note from diary) ’I feel like I’m really starting from scratch and feeling a little unsure of the communication via virtual means. It’s a very new territory for me. But I am really open to trying as many different avenues as possible’

Avenue means (from www.vocabulary.com)

• ‘a broad road in a town or city, typically having trees at regular intervals along its sides’.‘an approach’;
• ‘a way of approaching a problem or making progress towards something’;
• from the french verb ‘avenir’, which means, ‘to come to’ or ‘to arrive at’. 

I  would like to notice and explore our approaches, suggestions, ideas and experiments as we come together, arrive at these online meetings.

(note from diary) ‘I am very conscious of the children sitting and listening for long periods of time.’

I wonder how I can support and facilitate movement through this virtual medium?

How can I engage fully with others through all my senses? How can I take in, feel, sense the energy and spirit of our interactions, taste the temperature of the room  and listen to the unspoken needs of others and my own?

Where am I?

I am in Studio 4.

I am in the Firkin Crane building.

I am in Cork City.

I have gathered photographs of the outside of the building, where the studio is.

This felt important – to give the children an idea of where I am and what my world is like. To find out a little more about where I am. I am not from Cork. I am from County Limerick.

 

 

 

Sensory engagement with our place

In my own work currently, I have been investigating the sensory experience of place.

What frames and structures might be useful in this context to support our shared sensory engagement with our own place?

Miss Kyle and I talked about starting with the sense of touch.

We explore our hands, our prime source of touch.

Going outside

We go outside. We go outside to gather. We focus on gathering from the trees.

I go outside and touch the skin of trees, the bark. I notice my body response to this contact. I want to rub the skin and bark of the tree.

Here I’ve used soft pastels.

 Returning indoors

We share our gatherings.

I notice a sense of excitement rise and lift through the front of my spine, right up in between my ears. I lean forward.

We collect leaves and seeds, nuts and berries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I walk outside, I notice a sign on a walk which leads along a narrow road. It was

‘Bob & Joan’s Walk’.  I decide to inquire about this further for our next session.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, I suggest we make leaf tattoos on our hands and arms. We use the leaves that we have gathered.

I enjoy the printing of the leaf’s vein pattern on my hands.

I choose a leaf of a lime tree.

I notice the details of my own skin more clearly.

I find this leaf.

I notice it’s colour, lines, patterns, spreading out from the central spinal stem.

My chest widens and I breathe more deeply.