Another Night In

Saturday night, 12.04.2015, Miklabraut

Relaxing in the Living Room of Miklabraut

Sara is playing the piano, gently, ever so gently. A string of rainbow-coloured origami birds that we made together as a group, lilt and turn round slowly above her head. Her hair falls on her shoulders  in delicate waves, suddenly she stops. The room is quiet, we have turned off the main light. Now it is only the bunch of fairy lights hooped on a nail in the corner and a hurricane lamp illuminated with several tea lights which gives light to the room. Our bodies are tired and pleased to be at rest on the sofas; it was the thermal baths, the heat and bubbles which drain and soften the skin and cajole the muscles into a state of blissful inertia. I feel the way I do after a long day of hiking – the same sense of satisfaction from the day that has passed – the same joyful tiredness. Yet it has not been a day of over-exertion. It has been a successful day – a day of community strengthening. We have all relaxed into each other – a new trust has settled over the group. We know each other, we like each other, we are friends.

The morning’s yoga session was followed by a lengthy lunchtime meal attended by all the long-term volunteers here – both camp leaders and office workers – the so-called ‘logistics team’. Homemade lemon sorbet and coffee ice cream was followed by chocolate cheesecake and a hearty baked dish of potatoes and chicken. Many of us knitted or fiddled with paper. I can feel the ties between us slowly strengthening – between those I now know well and those I have just met. Each bright pair of eyes gives me more faith in the world, each beautiful story that I hear clears aside the brush obscuring the path.

There is Elsa, the strong, eager Latvian volunteer. She told me wonderful stories of her volunteering experiences in Jordan: using improvisation and drama techniques to connect with a group of young sixteen-year-old Jordanian school girls. I lapped up these stories hungrily; what positive and strengthening alternatives they proposed to the draconian top-down methods of school room instruction I had been coached in at my comprehensive school in London! I realised then that the basis for all group development – in education and learning also – is community. After community there is trust, after that there can be anything, especially learning. But I really believe now that community – in its widest sense – is fundamental to everything. Establish community and the bonds of love that this word signifies – and you establish a foundation for all development to build upon. It is a kind of soil, is community, a common wellspring. Education, creativity, the environment – they can all connect together, but only if you establish community first.

To have community you need to have leaders that the group respects and loves. To be a good leader you need to love. Not just superficially – you cannot just love the one who understands, you have to love all especially the one who doesn’t understand. If the leader is the conductor – the musical maestro – the convener of governance; she needs to be an integral part of the thing that she creates. She must love and judge but her interests lie with those of the group which also guides and sculpts her.

These are the kinds of positive models we need to help us discover how to build learning in the classroom. You cannot fake being a leader just as you cannot fake caring from those about you. It has to be there:  care and love and a sympathetic and faith-driven view of people which transcends particularities but is also fastened to them.

It is the organ. Now it is the strings. We were playing the wonderful Irish folk tune Bold Fenian Men earlier. The voices of the Yamaha piano ring out like a choir of ‘yeses’ in my mind. I realise why I am here. I am here to connect together the things I care about: social action, art and the environment into one organic unity. I am here to learn to be a ‘social artist’. \

Sleep now, think later.