| Parade
of Arts:
Bristol, UK |
 |
WHC's Regional
and Education Director, Paul Conneally was invited for a haiku residency
in Bristol
City Museum and Art Gallery for 6 days in October. The activities are part
of Bristol Poetry Festival. Workshops were conducted with adults and
youngsters. He was "Mr.Haiku" for the Fun Sunday event at the
start of the festival week. WHC mailing list members also participated in a
"WHC Parade of Life Kukai", writing responsive haiku for four of the
Japanese prints in seasonal themes for spring, summer, autumn and winter.
The whole time
in Bristol formed part of the Bristol Poetry Festival organised by The Poetry
Can, and was also part of the Japan 2001 events being held all year in the
UK in celebration of Japanese culture.
Bristol
"Parade of Life" website pages
The title of the exhibition is Parade of Life but the title of Paul's
week's residency was The Poetry of Japan: Visual Art meets Literature in
Bristol. He held 20 workshops during that week, working with many different
groups - nursery children, primary school children, young adults with learning
difficulties, senior citizens, degree students, families, local writers
and skate-boarders! The poems from each session number over 400 poems in total.
Paul writes:
I loved working with the
children as they made them. I only had an hour and a bit to introduce haiku to
the group from scratch and get them writing... . We were working in the
gallery space at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery using the "Parade
of Life" exhibition of Japanese Prints as starting points - the
workshop was to introduce haiku but also to get the children to look closely at
the prints and engage with them - connect in some way across time and
cultures...the children were marvelous, and working with them was
life-affirming!
For a portion of the haiku, children used the same visualisation techniques
employed with viewing the prints, to start engaging with moments from their own
lives.
I was lucky enough to have Alan Summers join me during the week (also a brief
visit from Celia Crook!)
