#28: A more playful approach

It’s been a few weeks since my last intervention and I’ve had some distance from the project in order to reflect. I have an opportunity on the horizon that will allow me to present the project at Camp Bestival as part of the Green Craft area which is run by Spinney Hollow. This could be a great opportunity to share the project with lots of people and gather a large amount of data. However the festival is aimed at families and children, which means that I would have to make some considerable changes if my work is to be suitable for that demographic.

But I’ve been going over the data already in my archive and I think this could be an interesting side step for the project to take. In order to make it more accessible I will have to dial back on the level of introspection that is being asked of the participants, I will also have to reduce the amount of language that is used in the process. These are two key points of criticism that emerged from my intervention with professional stakeholders. Staging the project at Camp Bestival will force me to make the activity more fun, I will also have the opportunity to focus more on the construction of the space that houses the project as I will have the option of using a large area at the festival.

The Story Garden

I have been thinking a lot about a comment that was made by Kate Hadley, one of my professional stakeholders. Her interaction with The Library Of Meaning got her reflecting on her personal philosophy: “Someone told me that you should look at your life not as a series of events with failures and successes but as a garden, where you can plant a seed and walk away to tend to other things while it takes root, then you can come back to find it has flowered and it’s time to care for it and work with it again.”

This comment made me think of something that was brought up by Kristina Dryza the archetypal consultant that I spoke too last year. She spoke about the outdated nature of ‘the hero’s journey’, that it is too linear and goal-oriented as a model of myth. It is predicated on the masculine ideal that one undertakes a struggle, does battle with an adversary, eventually wins the day and lives happily ever after. However this myth can begin to do harm when we look to it as a map for our lives because real life is not like that. Real life is about balance, and the achievement of a goal is often followed by a sense of emptiness as our story continues after our achievement and our ‘happily ever after’ is always just out of reach.

This also makes me think of something that another stakeholder, Dr Radha Modgil, mentioned in our interview; how she would like to create a theme park that was based on the model of the brain. She remarked on how useful it would be for people to interact with a metaphor for how our minds work, how it would help to provide clarity about something that is by its nature intangible and hard to understand.

All these conversations have come together in my mind recently and it has made me think of my project in terms of a story garden. A place that is an interactive metaphor for the way that we can make meaning in our lives and tend to our mental wellbeing. Participants could visit different parts of the garden to find meaning, or just spend time in the environment. It would act as a living metaphor for a method of self reflection that promotes balance, treating the world as a place to plant seeds and nurture the development of meaning, rather than a goal-oriented journey.

At the moment I am considering building a garden type space that has three simple structures in it that could house the three genres of archetypes, people, places and things. These structures would be based on the design of structures found in a garden like a trellis or a potting shed. The participants would visit each structure to collect an archetype for three points in their story; ‘Who shall we be?’, ‘Where shall we go?’, and ‘What shall we carry?’. They would use these three archetypes to build a story based on themselves that is open ended.

Workshop Element

To fit within the green craft area of Camp Bestival it would be good to include a workshop element for my participants. This is already in keeping with my project as it has involved so much craft already. I am considering getting my participants to construct a little lantern out of willow and cloth, then they could visit each part of the story garden to collect a little paper cut out that they could add to their lantern and build their story. Then their lantern would glow in the evening, a luminous totemic artefact that represents the story they would like to live by.

I am well aware that the majority of my participants would be young children, so I am not sure how cognisant they will be of this meaning-making, but it will be an interesting thing to explore. I would also like to see how I could also make the activity accessible to adults too.

For now I am building prototypes of that kind of lantern I would like my participants to make as well as planning and designing the garden space.