Welcome to Learning Event Five of the #WalkMyWorld Project 2015.
Can you be in two places at once?
Where is your “place”, the one space that you belong or identify with most? Do you have a family, identity, or culture that always calls you back “home”? As life evolves, and we try to progress with it, we’re sometimes drawn away from things that are meaningful to us. This could be a place, a space, people, food, or culture. When we think of “home”, or a place that calls back to us, that might not always be the current place that we’re living, loving, learning, or working within.
Do you have a heritage, or culture that draws you back to another place? Do you have other people(s) that call you back “home”? Do you have a totem? A totem is a being, spirit, or symbol that serves to unite and bring us back to our place or home. Sometimes there is no written language for this other place that you belong. Sometimes there is only oral storytelling and dreams to bind you to that group. What is your story? What is their story?
Your response for the fifth learning event
Reviewing the following video, Issue 1: Absaroka, which includes the poem Horse Bones by Jonathan Levitt.
Consider the imagery, words, and allusions the authors of this text share with you. What places are they calling back to for the speaker? In what ways does the speaker identify with these places? In what ways is the place and space still a home for the speaker? What totems do the authors share of these spaces and places?
Play, create, and share a digital representation of your totem. This could be an image, video, text, audioclip, or mashup that reflects the place and space that you most strongly identify with. You may chose to link this totem to other links and maps to share more information.
Tweet this response to the #WalkMyWorld hashtag. Be sure to stay active on the #WalkMyWorld hashtag to see what other totems people share during the week. You might feel moved and motivated to be creative and challenge yourself by reviewing what others share.
A guiding example
Last year, one of our organizers, Ian O’Byrne created a found poem and some GIFs created using family photos.
The found poem was constructed using two poems that were used at the prompt for the seventh learning event of 2014. Ian shared the poem and GIFs as a way to document and share an important part of the places and spaces that he identifies with.
You can review the post and work that he shared by clicking here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
