Re-enchanting the Landscape aims to enable children and young people through play and activity, to connect with both the landscape which they inhabit, and also the rich cultural traditions that are caught up with that landscape. Our purpose is to prove to a Second Life generation that there are more ways of experiencing ‘other worlds’ than the computer screen!
We offer a number of workshops that combine traditional craftwork, with storytelling, in a way that is designed to enrich the child or young person’s experience of each. When one remembers either artefacts such as the Bayeux Tapestry or the allegorical stone carving upon cathedrals, it is clear that this combination of activity and tale is a very old one. What is certain now, is that weaving at once words and willow, opens up the mind, allowing memory a greater potency, and in so doing making sense of the frequently repetitive actions involved in craftwork.
Our emphasis on the craftwork is on rural, sustainable and recycled crafts. The materials we use are either immediately at hand in the landscape or stuff that might otherwise have been thrown away. Likewise the stories we tell will have a strong link to the landscape be that through location or local history. We aim to show how one can, though imagination, transform the humdrum spaces of the everyday life, into a landscape rich in resources, activities, and resonant in the imagination.
Although the workshops are suitable for all ages above eight, we are particularly interested in working with teenagers, who are frequently excluded from the activity loop, and abandoned to those stories they can glean from computers and the television.
All our workshops are highly interactive, and are aimed to encourage not only memory and skill with hand and eye, but also social interaction between participants. Moreover each workshop will involve various different activities, and each activity will itself have differing degrees of complexity, allowing each child to very much find their own level.