ROAM for me has been about belonging, the pandemic offered a place to honour and own and be owned by place. During this time of separation we sought out spaces for solace and joy, where we could safely share moments people and place in the open city in a time of upheaval. One of the outcomes of the “lock down” meant that some of us were gifted with more time to build a special relationship with the place on our doorstep.
The work we have been doing in St Patricks spirals into this time, beginning on 13 March 2020 and leading till now.For these young women 2025 marks the end of a cycle and transition from primary to secondary education. As we leave things behind we find other things, we find ways to acknowledge grief and loss in the passage of time and recognise the resilience that has brought us through.
Together we mapped the places in our locality that are dear to our hearts, the places we go for food, for play, to be alone and to be with friends. We remembered how we were when were were 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 and the milestones that happened during that time. As an older adult, working with young people, there has been a personal reaching into the past both back to the pandemic years but also to when I was 8, 9,10,11,12. The intergenerational aspect of ROAM is one that holds a deep fascination for me.
So trying to inhabit the space I brought some botanical inks foraged from materials in the locality during the pandemic, we used blackberry and oak, alder and pine inks and made messy, splashy, and controlled maps about time, using modifiers to alter the colour and watch changes. We sometimes shared stories and sometimes had time just for ourselves, to be in the process, the creativity of gesture and material unfolding before us and the responses without and within. We each gathered our weekly pages into a book. The splashy time maps are still changing colour as the inks fade or oxidise in contact with the air.
We made tie dye samples binding cloth with bands and spraying these bundles with colour, we used gloves to protect our skin in a reiteration of the hand care of pandemic times. Some of our patterns even mirrored the familiar shape of the corona virus. We find that patterns repeat, spirals from our ancestors and circles in nature come through in many things that we do – when we create we connect. We make beautiful, messy, precise and surprising things.
We made small charms from clay, gifts to ourselves and also to the community. Some of these appear on the wall of our local shop, just up from the school, in Gardiner’s Hill.
Julie Forrester, artist with the girls in Ms O’Connell’s 6th Class, St Patricks GNS, Gardiner’s Hill
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