How did the Breathe project come about?
Breathe was a keynote piece spoken piece by John Paul Lederach presented along with contributions from other poets, at the opening of the 4 Corners Festival in 2021. We were in lockdown at the time and so it was in that context that the piece was conceived and delivered.
The approach is quite different, as he describes the keynote as “neither poetry nor prose”. I have been working with John Paul for quite a few years now, and he has also mentored me. When we spoke about the content, I wondered if his words could be embodied, explored and interpreted visually. What might it look like if a group of CAP participants were given an opportunity to work with those words and see what they make of them.
He was very supportive of those ideas being developed and so we started to work on a project.
This was a CAP project?
Yes. John Paul and I discussed a possible approach, we contacted the core team at the 4 Corners Festival. They were very supportive of taking the themes further as the festival is mentioned in the piece.
Possible key themes we were thinking through were, what the phrase “four corners” might mean to people, as there were many interpretations. The committee saw it as the idea of bringing people out of their corner of the city and connecting with people and other corners of the city. Some envisage it as the four corners of Belfast City Hall, or the four corners of a room given that this was during covid but regardless of these interpretations, we thought that this would be one concept that we could play with.
The project has two elements to it, is that correct?
Yes, I am working with Charmaine McBride again. She is a dance facilitator, and because we are working with expressive arts processes, it is good practice for facilitators to work in pairs. There are 5 modalities in the expressive arts; movement, visual, music, word and digital, so co-facilitation allows us to draw on each others strengths and different skills and work across modalities.
This project has proven to be very interesting. Charmaine starts the sessions by considering the body, the idea of breathing. We think about breath and the movement that is involved in that. The idea of the concertina, breathing in and breathing out, inhaling and exhaling and that this process, is the activity of life.
Then, how do we draw breath, literally? Most importantly, the key thing is the artmaking process. How do we visually represent these ideas and concepts? What can we discover in the process? How can we bring something into being from nothing or as John Paul describes it in Breathe, “somethingness from nothingness”?
Who are the participants who are working on this project?
The participants have come together in the Forthspring Inter-Community Centre on the Springfield road; mostly from West Belfast, some from the Forthspring itself and others come from other community groups. There’s a good mix of people.
Where to now?
We have a session on the 1st November which will be part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. John Paul Lederach will take part in that event through ZOOM, attendees will join us in the zoom audience and physical space for an interactive session. Charmaine and I will lead attendees through the components of recent sessions to show how ideas have developed and what our thinking has been so far. John Paul will give us some thoughts on what we have done, how things might develop for the next three sessions (this is a work in progress after all), and touch on how the arts make a difference in the context of peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
There has been much reflection on the 25 years anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement already this year however, there has been very little space offered to consider the sense of the mystery of peacebuilding or reconciliation. A lot of that comes through the arts, storytelling, dance, and song, and that process would be quite different from the more formulaic, linear methods of peacebuilding.
The evening will hopefully allow for some consideration about some of the more serendipitous and creative opportunities within peacebuilding processes, where people try things, explore, play with ideas, in order to forge new possibilities.
