I have been trying to keep a log of my daily activities and progress as I now have to allot separate times for different projects. A couple of months ago, I accidentally launched the munabol writing sessions with BIPOC youngsters (ages 14-25). The first group, which I called the ground zero group is made up of two youngsters based in NL and two based in the Philippines. We’ve recently expanded to add on three new members and soon we’ll be launching a kids group (ages 10-13).

Ground zero had a ten week trajectory and I’m putting together a small booklet which reports on their progress and includes work produced by the first four in those weeks. For the expanded sessions, we’ll be working on new stories and working from a programme I’m developing. I’ve been gathering together some of the pieces that I want to use as part of the first exercise session and am feeling quite excited about it.

I think about how seeing can start from such a simple thing as looking out onto the street outside your window and simply documenting what you see to something more complex like looking at a photograph of a scene in a museum and asking participants to write down what they see.

The idea behind this practice was born from another project I’m working on where the ask was to incorporate museum objects into the practice. I thought about the museum itself which is a colonial space and I thought about the objects in it. My thinking was that if we are able to see beyond the object and beyond the space, we might be able to find the space where we can move forward in conversations around certain museum pieces. This is something I’m still thinking on, but for the munabol sessions, I want to encourage young practitioners to open the inner eye which is so essential to creative artists. To see, to look, and to recognize that there is often something more to what you see than what appears on the surface.

When I was a child, someone once told me that to be an artist means that you see beyond the leaf. It took me a while to realise it, but I think that was the point where I decided I would embrace writing and become that kind of artist with the use of my pen.

In any case, it’s this kind of seeing that I want to share with the youngsters and as I said to the ground zero group, we may all be looking out at the same scene or on the same view, but we won’t all notice or see the same things because each of us looks at the world differently. I am eager to discover those different angles in the different works offered tomorrow.

Working with youngsters and kids is inspiring and the writing sessions give me energy to keep on writing, to keep on creating, to keep on pushing for projects that will encourage people to dream, to imagine, to make their playful and creative selves visible in the world.

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