Eden Project Workshop

Our box















We had an interesting day at the Eden Project doing a workshop with the Creative Director of Wildworks Sue Fox . The brief was to take in 7 items that you would grab having been told you had to leave all your possessions bar 7 .

’You are leaving home. You don’t know if you will ever return. You are part of an exodus into an unknown future.

Pack a small, portable box or suitcase. Choose 7 things that you think will be essential, or precious to you. You may choose intimate things that tell your story, that remind you of who you are. You may choose things without which your life would be unbearable.

I chose my camera(future events) , my India sketchbook (to remind me of my past life and Buddhism as it was the one I used on my 3 week pilgrimage last year ), a scarf (to keep me warm and one that belonged to my son obvious memories there !), a sarong (printed by me years ago that could be used as a towel/garment/shelter/blanket/garment etc),a fork (for eating /digging etc) that had family memories , a photo of my sons (ah!), and my pencil case complete with knife to records the future ( My comfort item). We did the workshop with MA Graphics some of whom had almost virtual items (cardboard cut outs)! It was fascinating to hear the different things that people chose and why.
Sue talked about Wildworks , a theatre company she is involved in and the project they are planning called "The Beautiful Journey" looking at how people engage with their world.
We then had to create , in groups, a box with an imagined future landscape (see images above)
which included a flooded landscape with people living on ice bergs , one where the cities are abandoned but foraged and a simple country life (but with individual air transport! ) with a flame of hope (our box) and one where nature takes over and the cities crumble.
As Sue said the most difficult thing was to decide what would happen /will happen as we all had very different ideas and time scales and also life is very unpredictable( so in tune with Buddhist thinking / chaos theory, the only certain thing is that things will change!). but we like to think that we are in control ( Newtonian theory of cause and effect). Little things add up to big changes we cant predict their outcomes but we can create fertility for interesting things to happen!