Day 6- 2 March 2011

Today I woke up wrecked.  I can't seem to shake this cold I've had for nearly 3 weeks.  I was researching Damien Hirst, and came across his 'Pharmacy' piece on the Tate Modern web page.  I had to agree with him about how we all trust pills to make us feel better...mmm...  I am also wondering why I am constantly getting sick this year and I am never sick.  I am putting it down to an unhealthy lifestyle which I have developed because I seem to have no time to do anything anymore.  

The kids at the school were all ready for the day that lay ahead.  Last week they were on a break, so today we got stuck in  and I was on 'making the headphone's stick' duty today.   They had made the headphones out of newsprint and foil and that was stuck into a jam jar lid.  I got one girl who had made them really well, to give some of the others, a demo.   There were two student teachers in to 'help' too.  They seemed to just be walking around taking it all in.  The last time we were there, everyone took a total break from the puppets and concentrated on making the 'radios'.   The artist had brought photocopies of various forms of listening devices for them to get idea's from.  They all got stuck in making their 'ipods' - the universal choice.  I wondered if any of them had any idea of what a sony walkman was or even what a portable cd player was, and I felt quite ancient today.  It reminded me of the time I asked some kids I had for a workshop,  if they knew what my 'clock' could have been made out of?  It was a painted LP record.   No one could hazard a guess and eventually when I told them, one little girl said: ' Oh I think my grandad has some of those." 

Looking at the puppets today, I again was  amazed at how they had all colour co-ordinated the devices to go with the outfits and couldn't help thinking  about global advertising and its  effect on our youth.  Was it good or bad?  Was it their own choice or do they even have a choice anymore?  With all the planned obsolescence and trend forecasting does anyone  really have a choice about what they choose to do anymore?   This week they continued on with the making of the clothes,  and I had stuck all their wool hair down for them previously, so most of them were looking pretty close to complete.

Today, about half way through,  something quite unexpected happened.  The boy who had decided to paint his puppets face a very dark brown, came to me and asked me to stick  a white mustache onto it.  He had dressed the puppet up in pink and had colourful hair to match.  When I asked him whether it was a girl or boy puppet he said: "a bit of both".  I started  thinking about a cultural studies lecture we had last year about essentialism, and how we are programmed to think from an early age that baby girls wear pink and baby boys were blue etc.. and  I thought well, that was that theory blown out of the water in this case.  

 I started to think this is typical of higher education, that once one knows about something,  you start analysing   things you wouldn't usually think twice about.   You start to see things totally differently to how they probably are, or how other people see them.  You see things from several different angles.   I wondered how he had arrived at his decision.  Did he know someone who he was basing it on?  Or  was he just making up a character  he imagined up?  Did the newspapers images that had been laid down for protecting the tables, have anything to do with it?  Or  I wondered, was  he was just trying to be funny in front of his friends as he had a smile on his face when he asked me to stick it on.  

When I wrote my statement of interest for this project I mentioned that I would like to try something similar with children in South Africa,  if and when I go home on holidays.  After  the 'skin colour'  question  came up on a previous blog I started to wonder whether, if I was doing a similar project in a township school in South Africa, would the children there, paint any of their puppets pink and orange?  And if they chose not to,  would that  become an issue for the school and their teachers? I wondered if the concerns we have here in Ireland about inclusiveness, and addressing the issues that arise because of it, or the lack of it,  would be the same elsewhere in the world.  One would think it would be a universal issue, but is it, or does it just arise in communities that have  multi-cultural issues to address?

 I was delighted that this class had exceeded all my expectations because they had  'all sorts' of people in the mix.     There were all sorts of different skin colours, even blue ones,  males and females and even boys making girl puppets,  and there was even one who was half and half, colour-wise,  and now, one today, that was half and half gender wise too.  Refreshing to see in a rural country school!