wild at art: Teacher workshops

Love the Place you Live

Well I have to tell you, that I LOVE Hong Kong. I love the natural world here and over the last 22 years have been working in the arts with all sorts of schools and groups and many many teachers. I have been lucky enough to work with many local and international schools, students, teachers and parents, the Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival, World Wildlife Fund, Kadoorie Farm, and other community groups to develop all kinds of community and educational arts projects.
My passion for discovering nature through the eyes of children and teachers took me on a journey towards my own MA Ed in Environmental Education. I have now spent the last 10 years using art projects to express the local natural world in a variety of settings.

This is what I know: green environmental attitudes are not built into our hard drives……we need to learn how to load those in! Having intimate and exciting encounters with nature needs to come first to help build a sense of connection and a desire to protect our world.

You can become an observer of nature, discover some small moments each day, you can use these “ Nature Detective Skills” to get to know your area, choose a special “place” to be YOURS.

Observe and watch each single day for a month, your place does not have to be huge it can be simple some tree roots, a planter, a small pond for example:

1) learn to be still in the ‘place’, be patient, wait and watch

2) check your ‘place’ each day, look for changes

3) learn to listen to small nature sounds in your ‘place’

4) look up at the sky and tops of trees, look under things, look behind and

around things……….secrets are lurking! look inside holes and spaces.

5) crawl on the ground if you need to !

6) what small things struggle through cracks in the pavement near your place

? nature is very resilient !

7) use homemade viewfinders to seek out new details

8) take daily photograph if it helps

9) Keep a journal.....record what you see.