Friday 30 December 2011

Playing and surviving


Experimenting directly on brown wrapping
 paper in a little homage to Irish painter Jack Yates

If you're just busy trying to survive, there's no space to think clearly let along creatively.  That's one of the reasons why I admire Cardboard Citizens' work with the homeless. They give people, who are usually consumed by the harsh business of living on the edge, the opportunity to safely pause, look around and see what other possibilities life might offer. And how problems can be confronted in new ways.

Augusto Boal who devised Forum Theatre, which is the basis of  Cardboard Citizens' work in Corby, understood that it is not just the literally oppressed or the marginalised that suffer from the lack of imaginative space. He coined the term 'cop-in-the-head' to illustrate that all of us, to some degree, restrict ourselves and have the capacity to fearfully deny or destroy even the good we are offered. We become blinkered. We don't even look - let alone see.

My malignant troll (see last post) is one such cop. A much lesser version of the totalitarian army that formerly ruled there. That's why I understand the need for Cardboard Citizens and why I am enjoying some serious creative play with the Kraft wrapping paper.

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