I took the kids on a Pirate Day at Shibden Hall today which was part treasure hunt and part crafting activity. The facilitators were in costume and in pirate character for the treasure hunt. They took us for a short walk around the estate engaging the children and adults in conversation and ‘pirate jokes’. The treasure hunt could’ve technically been something children could’ve done by themsleves (supervised) but the facilitators performing as treasure hunt pirate added another layer of dialogue based experience that engaged the children that extra bit and sparked their imagination with the narrative.
We had a Dwell Time meeting today and discussed our plans for our September-December workshop programme. This idea development stage building ideas up through dialogue is one of the most rewarding and exciting parts of collaborations when anything is possible and ideas are being conjured up, thrown around and tested for their potential.
The workshops themselves will involve a lot of dialogue too. Initially providing an overview of the session, talking with each person on a 1:1 basis and discussing work as a group. The dialogue element of workshops is really important and sometimes for participants it’s the most important part – almost as if the workshop and thing they produce or take part in is the byproduct of the social and creative interaction. It’s the process more than the end product and that process is the dialogue.
“Is it a sculpture?”
“No it’s not got a door.”
“Is there a door on top?”
“I can’t see!”
“It might be a sculpture still”
Oh.
A small word but can be a heavily loaded word.
When you receive bad news.
When you receive surprising information.
When you receive information and want to ackwnowledge receipt of said information.
When you don’t know what else to say.
An interjection in dialogue.
Synonyoms for ‘oh’: ahem, alas, amen, boo, er, hello, hooray, hurrah, shucks, whoopee, wow, ah, egad, golly, hey, huh, jeepers, oops, ouch, phew, phooey, pooh, psst, rah, ugh, umoh. Via dictionary.com
We had a big family meet up today at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There were cousins there I haven’t seen in 30 years and swapping memories of our childhood was great. We each have slightly different memories of the same occasions and the same houses and fields. Our memories were more of things and places rather than conversations. Conversations will no doubtedly have made or enabled these occasions and been the conduit of the experiences but they are not the features of the long term memories themselves. The moments are then relived through conversation and the dialogue of swapping fragments of memory – piecing together our individual memories to create a bigger collective memory.
