
Recently a two-day workshop with youths from Pollsmoor and Westlake Communities of the Cape Town area was completed. Jason Bridgewater, a Master’s student at the Centre for Applied Human Rights, the University of York, authored this reflection on the process.
Through group and individual activities, in combination with the ‘Return to the Kalahari’ graphic novel, the students have explored the themes of identity, multiple stories and social scripts.
On the first day, after a morning of team-building, followed by interacting with the graphic novel, I was left taken aback by the profound responses of the youths and their interaction surrounding the idea of Heroes. Following lunch, the students addressed how complicated identity is through character mapping and looking at identity markers. In particular, they discussed in-depth the different aspects of themselves and their backgrounds which bring both discrimination from others and the most joy to themselves. Interestingly, sometimes these aspects were the same, e.g. ethnicity and race.
On the second day, the workshop began with warm-ups and a reflection of the previous day, recalling sections from the novel which were most memorable to them. Scar, the gangster character from the novel, and also the changes in the children undergo through meeting the spirit animals, are just two of the areas of the novel that appeared to be memorable to them.
After having produced an insightful material reflection of themselves in the form of a poster about where they came from, who they are, and what has influenced them, their next challenge was to create a presentation to represent themselves as a group.
As I sit here observing the design process there are scripts being written, a drum beat being played, girls swirling in scarves, and artwork being designed. Teams have gone through meltdowns and come out the other side – I look forward to seeing the two days come to fruition after lunch with these performances.