Three facilitators, two separate campuses (Kalikalos and Anilio-STK), four 4 year olds and their mothers, and a mixed group of Greek and English speaking teenagers with a shared history and a clearly stated wish to stay as a particular group. How was it ever going to work?
And yet, a miracle occurred last week, and we have a film to prove it! Lots of smiles, swimming, sand and sea shots in the Kalikalos Family Movie fully produced by the young humans in our group. (Request permission to see our clips on YouTube.)
Each morning we met up for group activities and made a flexible plan for our week together. We had different art activities, there was pizza night with the return of Dave (from Philadelphia) the moon-walking pizza maker. I ran the Participatory Video sessions (PV), there was a beach sleepover party under the light of the moon, midnight swims, forest walks through a gorgeous Mt Pelion ravine to cool waterfalls, plus plenty of circle sessions and discovery games.We were graced to be able to use both campuses for our first week. Kalikalos Kissos is surrounded by a picturesque village and the village sounds permeate our group work. Anilio STK, 3 km to the north, is set in lush forest and basks in the deafening music of cicadas connecting us with Nature.
Every day we had the sensual experience of swimming in the clear blue Aegean sea and one on a couple of the days jumping big beefy waves! The sunshine worked its magic and as the Week I ends, our group of adults and kids are are now golden-skinned and smiling. In this constant harmony of wind and waves, we observed an equal harmony among our lovely children, with few struggles or quarrels. Our only screams came from a beetle-bitten 4 year old explorer who bravely showed us a drawing of his creature the next day and spoke eloquently about what he would like to have done with it. (I’m afraid it was squashed by his anxious brother.)
We completed our week with a moving Thursday evening fireside sharing which included singing, storytelling and authentic expressions from the heart from both adults and children. Spiros provided cakes from the village!
We look forward, this coming second week, to co-creating a brand new experience by drawing on the needs, expectations and skills of the now experienced children and parents. Their own creative ideas for Week II have been welling up these past few days and we are ready to turn the workshop over to them. With luck, Dorota and I, the official leaders, will be able to sit back and be true focalisers--providing the resources and coordination to allow this group now to run itself!
Dorota Owen, Forres, Scotland & Emile van Dantzig, Bilthoven, Netherlands
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