Turkish hospitality is long the stuff of legend - and it's all true!!
With the excellent company of our Swedish friends, we had a wonderful memorable experience. In the words of Kris Brown (project learner UK): 'I wish I could feel like this every day' He said he felt his disabilty was not an issue in this suportive and enabling environment. We learned the beautiful art of EBRU and personally I could have meditated amongst it's flowing forms long into the night and plan to run a workshop with our groups here at the earliest possible opportunity. Other great experiences involved meeting family & picking the most gorgeous cherries Ive ever seen, watching the swallows & the trout, meeting the well mannered but eager & excited children of Begder, sharing in the spirituality of the mosque at Burdur and learning more about each others ways over sun dabbled lunches underneath tall pine trees. The soundtrack to this was lots of laughter both nervous and comfortable, the tinkling of spoons in the chai glasses & the spine tingling call to prayer.
I saw the growing confidence and comfort of all our companions and pleasured in sharing in their new experiences (especially those of our learning disabled learners). Having the chance to conceptualise, devise & run a workshop was very special, including exercises led by our learning disabled learners, working with everyone and the co-creation of our artwork on the final morning - all these images that will long stay with me. It was wonderful to feel all of our relationships deepening, language not an issue, finding our feet and our voices; speaking to each other in different languages, somehow understanding! We were of course helped in this by the excellent English of Ahmet and Monica.
So having practically explored our aim of 'co-creation' we began to consider the wider learning outcomes, such as group concentration, cooperation, confidence building and skill sharing and how we might apply what we have learned from each other in different contexts. Fran and I have been working hard to define the Headway working methodology which we have developed over a number of years and of which this workshop was an example.
We also will be lookingat how we can pass on the partnerships learning & collective knowledge to others as European added value. I look forward to deepening our study at the next mobility in the U.K by further identiying our learning outcomes and how we can transfer these to other situations.
England eagerly awaits to welcome you all!!! Until then dear colleagues...
güle güle,
hejdå vi ses snart
Allie
Alison Walton-Robson
Creative Director
Headway Arts
Creative Director
Headway Arts
