Good weekend
Well I have had a good weekend, on Friday I went off to Basingstoke, to be collected by Liz who was one of the two facilitators I was meant to be working with this weekend. We went onto Alton where we met up with Becky the second facilitator, we then sat down and planned out first session with the young people (11-16 year olds) of Portsmouth and Southampton's Bi-annual residential meeting. The first session was good fun and seemed to go ok, we had a couple of surprises, like one non-English speaking participant. I am aware that the name games we play are slowly becoming less interesting to those young people (yp) who have been on any number of our workshops before, so maybe it's time to think of new ones.
Just to put you in the picture the workshops we were asked to lead needed to be loosely based on the theme of the environment. We adapted some games to make them work for this, like changing there names or in the case of 'Giants, Wizards and Elves' we exchanges each to be 'Trees, Humans and Flowers' this game worked well and the yp did not want to stop playing it. So altogether we had about five and a half hours with a group that slowly shrank over the weekend. We managed to produce two short plays for the adults and parents of the yp.
There were other activities taking place over the weekend for the older members, and it was great having a sharing session where we not only got to show our plays but also got to see some of the other activities (dancing, poems, art, discussions, etc...
On Saturday night there was barn dancing, and yes after hiding for a couple of dances I did get up and do some. I really enjoyed it, and I think given the opportunity I will partake in any further chances of this wonderful thing, I am not very good at (possibly something to add to the CV). I guess my reluctance to dancing was born through being forced to dance at school balls, but as I have shown this fear has now escaped me, it might also have something to do with my beautiful facilitator friends Becky and Liz.
This was probably the best set of workshops I have had the pleasure of doing in this country, mainly thanks to Becky and Liz who seemed to have the skills and adventuress to make workshops work for yp who feel tired and unready to act. The yp soon felt energetic enough to take part and have lots of fun.
Ok and something else a bit strange for me I went swimming this may seem normal to you, but I will put this in context, I hate swimming, I know this is mainly because I am somewhat big and therefore know that I do occasionally have people look at me and often insult my appearance, this has put me off swimming for most of my adult life. So I went swimming for a good hour, it was fun. I think the difference is that in a Quaker atmosphere I feel safe, and therefore do not care what people think.
Just to put you in the picture the workshops we were asked to lead needed to be loosely based on the theme of the environment. We adapted some games to make them work for this, like changing there names or in the case of 'Giants, Wizards and Elves' we exchanges each to be 'Trees, Humans and Flowers' this game worked well and the yp did not want to stop playing it. So altogether we had about five and a half hours with a group that slowly shrank over the weekend. We managed to produce two short plays for the adults and parents of the yp.
There were other activities taking place over the weekend for the older members, and it was great having a sharing session where we not only got to show our plays but also got to see some of the other activities (dancing, poems, art, discussions, etc...
On Saturday night there was barn dancing, and yes after hiding for a couple of dances I did get up and do some. I really enjoyed it, and I think given the opportunity I will partake in any further chances of this wonderful thing, I am not very good at (possibly something to add to the CV). I guess my reluctance to dancing was born through being forced to dance at school balls, but as I have shown this fear has now escaped me, it might also have something to do with my beautiful facilitator friends Becky and Liz.
This was probably the best set of workshops I have had the pleasure of doing in this country, mainly thanks to Becky and Liz who seemed to have the skills and adventuress to make workshops work for yp who feel tired and unready to act. The yp soon felt energetic enough to take part and have lots of fun.
Ok and something else a bit strange for me I went swimming this may seem normal to you, but I will put this in context, I hate swimming, I know this is mainly because I am somewhat big and therefore know that I do occasionally have people look at me and often insult my appearance, this has put me off swimming for most of my adult life. So I went swimming for a good hour, it was fun. I think the difference is that in a Quaker atmosphere I feel safe, and therefore do not care what people think.