Mona's second postcard from South Africa - Drawn to help, Help to draw
Time flies, and the third week of our trip is already over. And what a week it's been!
We had some exercises with the whole crew at the preschool in Athlone, we did a lot of physical work and started rehearsals for our show. It's a lot of fun and it also means stepping out of your comfort zone :o)
Photo credits RAMrpire
Photo credits RAMrpire
Photo credits RAMrpire
On Wednesday, I conducted a workshop with the Kaospilots team, who are currently working in Cape Town for three months. They are working on partnerships with local projects, and my workshop focused on how they can approach this, particularly with regard to colonialism, privilege, and rank. I am very inspired by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's work on narratives and stereotypes. Her fantastic TED Talk, "The Peril of the Single Story," is always on the agenda for this workshop. Instead of having conversations about cultural differences based on nationality, ethnicity, or skin color, we worked by looking at different continuums of preferred communication styles. This is a model inspired by both Andrew Price and Brandy Agerbeck. I further developed it with my own observations about how we can vary our preferred way of working/communicating (e.g., direct vs. indirect). We tend to say that Germans are very direct people, but the truth is that there are also Germans who prefer indirect communication. Therefore, it makes more sense to focus on the specific person in front of you and sense which communication style is needed in that particular conversation. Simply having a German person standing before you doesn't tell you much about how they want to communicate with you.
Over the past few weeks, I've resumed my work with Activate!, a large South African NGO that has run leadership and entrepreneurship programs with over 2,500 young South Africans over the last nine years. I'll soon be conducting an intensive visual thinking training with some activists, as they're keen to use graphic facilitation and recording. This is one of my absolute favorite clients because they engage with (my) visuals in a really deep and meaningful way. AND they encourage me to experiment with new ways of using visuals, which brings a lot of joy to my work. Last week, they called and asked if we should collaborate on creating an online training program that would make Activate's training accessible online. This also means the training can reach more rural areas in South Africa and even go international. We're currently playing around with the format, and I'm excited to share more about it. I'm really looking forward to making a visual thinking training available online on their platform. A journey that will last the next two years has only just begun! 🙂
On Friday we performed 3 shows at 3 different schools in Athlone.
It was really great to finally use the V3 XL wall in public and to experiment further with it, combining circus techniques with visual thinking. I'm really practicing letting go of control over the creative process on the wall. Which isn't always so easy :o) But it helps when a 3-year-old grabs a marker and starts expressing themselves on the wall.
Photo credits RAMrpire
I have a lot to share, but I'd like to save some things for next week!
PS The last school we visited on Friday for the show had a sign on the wall that read “This is a gun-free zone.” Although I’ve only personally experienced non-violent gang attacks outside my home in Copenhagen, and not in Cape Town, I think this is a pretty strong reflection of the reality we work in, that a school needs this kind of signage.
Together with other sponsors like RAMrpire Agency and Visual Facilitators, we are supporting Mona Ebrup 's project in South Africa. You can find more information here .
