Day 1 with Jeewan Jal

The first day with Jeewan Jal was unlike any other. And I don’t mean it in the cliché sense. It really was something different for the 11 participants involved in the project. The central theme of the day was more about knowing each other and exploring our own self.

Our first session was discussion about creativity and when a question “Are you creative?” was raised the discussion halted for some moment. To this a participant replied, normally this question is thought of as a taboo and answering it in the affirmative would make people judge him as a proud person. Moreover, such discussion continued and it is not something one normally ponders upon. We call an artist creative because he makes a painting which is unique but is it all to it? Is it only the forms which is seeable that is creative? The discussion cycled around. The funny thing is that we still don’t have an answer for it. Given the diverse nature of creativity and forms we merely discussed on its infinite nature.

This discussion session was proceeded with clay work in which we were asked to represent our fear. I had never used clay before and neither had a lot of other participants. My biggest fear being chaos, I tried to represent it in the form of randomness with holes, cut ends here and there which looked pretty funny. Later, we were asked to do what we wanted with the clay fear. Most of us molded the clay into our hopes.

This was proceeded with listing of hopes and fears we think we might encounter at being involved in the project. My personal hope was being inspired with an idea on which I could build on later and having a great experience with the team at doing something good for the community. Whilst my fear was that the project being ended as a black box giving no essence for Sian and her thesis.

Putting aside feelings and emotions, the project being a workplace also needed some forms of guidelines for working together. Borne out of necessity everyone gave their input on how the workplace should be and we compiled a list of things. Having fun made it to the top of the list.

Later, we listed ‘Give and Gain’ aspects of the project. We made a list of things that can be contributed to the project. My field of expertise being environmental science, I listed my ‘give’ as raising awareness about environmental issues.

Then the participants were paired with each other in which we got to ask question to better acquaint ourselves with our counterpart. Central to the theme my partner and me started with a bunch of questions two strangers might be asking about one another which later ended with our mutual interest of talking about binge watching series.

Finally, the session ended with the making of body map where we highlighted our story, our dreams, our aims and hopes and fears. This sessions is still not completed and will continue to our third day with Jeewan Jal.