Cederberg Stories: Workshop for Clanwilliam:
Clanwilliam Heritage workshop, Home, Landscape and Me – 23rd and 24th September 2013 – Heritage Day and beyond.
CBN is privileged to have two guest facilitators at our heritage workshop. One is Peter Slingsby, a distinguished and awarded novelist for teenagers. His novel Jedro’s Bane is set exactly in the area where the workshop participants live. When I read the book recently, I could glance out of one window to the towering Cederberg Mountains where the historical protagonist, Koot Dawid lived. From my other window I can see the village of Sederville where the modern boy, Jedro Dawid lives. This book could not be more appropriate for this workshop.
More than that, Peter also happens to be a cartographer and his new map of the Cederberg hiking trails has just been launched. We will be using landscape and maps as an integral part of the proceedings, drawing the shapes of the mountains and creating collages and then transferring that information into maps of the mountains; looking at the pattern of the village on the map and then adding the homes of the children to it – and writing, and reading about all of this.
Our other facilitator is Canadian-born performance poet CrocE. Through song and poetry he is going to draw the children into writing activities on two themes – one is Home and Landscape and the other is for a project called Listen to Me! In this, the children will be able to articulate issues that are important to them – let their voices be heard.
Lesley Beake will work on the Postcard Project, where the children draw their own self portraits and write a summary of themselves on the the back – and send it to someone! They will also do some writing on family in the run up to the next project, which will look at family history and heritage.
As a general theme, we will be thinking about identity – Who am I? And looking at how names of people on maps tie in with stories about real people, and tell a story of their own.
As a grand finale to the workshop we will have a Heritage Day dancing display from children of Elizabethfontein Primary School of their famous Reel Dancing – which also tells a story.
We will be lucky enough to have two helpers, Rosemary Bangham who assisted at the Red Hill 2 workshop last year and Sarah Chaimowitz who is new to the project. Librarians from the Clanwilliam Library will be there on both days of the workshop.
