“Rivers not only wind their way across the American continent, but course through American literature and art. T. S. McMillin offers a learned and lively primer for our reading of river literature and of rivers themselves—and in the process a primer for understanding how the human mind derives meaning from all of nature.”—Scott Slovic, author, Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility.
Rivers have a place in human history unrivaled by any human endeavour. The sheer elemental force of their presence in our development as a species has carved out a landscape on which the human story has been written. The oldest civilisations emerged from the banks of three great river systems: The Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and the Yellow River. The Indus Valley is often considered the birthplace of civilization, with evidence dating back to 4500BC. However, what about the Nile region, where emergence dates back to 3200BC, or North America and the tribes living around the Colorado River, and the Yellow River and so on. The point is not to provide and ancient history lesson, but to understand the important role that rivers have played in the development of humankind.
We could think about the rich culture of the Mississippi, or the romance of the Seine, the industry of the Rhine or the mystery of the Amazon; and yet all of these rivers are a part of the whole system. All of them tributaries to the vast global water cycle that sustains life on this planet. In Roman literature, poets and writers looked to rivers for their inspiration. If one wanted to write a love poem, then a beautiful, full flowing river would be the source, and the writer would actually drink from this water to inform his art. If the subject was to be some kind of conflict or aggression, then the poet would drink from a turbulent river. The Roman poets literally drank their inspiration from their environment. This kind of connection is something which we are loosing in modern culture. We are no longer connected with our environment in the same way – in fact, using the term “connected with” is an indication of this. We are our environments, and perhaps rivers and water are the best ways to understand this. Afterall, the water that runs through your part of the world, has been all around the system. The water that flows in your river, flows in every river on earth. Furthermore, the water that flows in your river now, has flowed throughout the system all through history, and will continue to do so. It is not difficult to understand why so many creation myths use water as a key symbol. We all breathe liquid for the first nine months of our lives.
Understanding that we are our environment is a central concept within the Kawa model and key aspects of the Kawa poetics (the language of rivers). To become fully imersed in the Kawa approach, one must understand that the construct is not simply a mechanical interaction between water, rock, driftwood and channel; but a whole environment full of dynamic complexity which is ever changing and adapting to new challenges and events. Applied to oneself, the river metaphor becomes a powerful tool for reflection, communication, understanding constructs, organisation and transition and change. Very often we become stuck in our development, especially as adults, when we don’t expect to be confronted by fundamental challenges to our perception of how the world works = or more accurately, how we believe it should work.
The kawa Creative approach is to look at what is happening now, and to illustrate this using the river environment. The process of change or “unsticking” is then undertaken as an exploration of this environment. In the same way that Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” is a rehearsal for revolution, the exploration that an individual undertakes in the Kawa process is a “rehearsal” for the life change that they wish to undertake. This exploration might be undertaken as a conversation, visually, via digital media or by using whatever skills and resources are available. All of these explorations are personal journey’s which have significance and meaning within the participants’ physical, social and emotional environs, which allows them to identify the direction of the emerging flow. Being able to bring one’s river into focus, provides the enpowerment needed to begin shaping a new environment, which is in harmony with the participants’ needs, abilities, resources and aspirations.
Over the past eighteen months Kawa Creative has worked and liased with several individuals who have been looking for change in their working or personal lives, as well as introducing the concept to organisations outside of the healthcare sector. These explorations and consultations have been integral to developing the Kawa Creative approach, which is one of imagination and exploration, underpinned by the central premise that we exist as “overlapping spheres of shared experience.” This blog is a reflection on how this development process has led to a place of new growth and increased flow, as well as an outline of the Kawa Creative approach to facilitating positive change.
A great many thanks should go to Michael Iwama, Jouyin Teoh, Amy Leader, Sarah Bodell, Gillian Crossley, Beki Dellow, Jon Pearson, Sue Walpole, Kiran Narang, Bee Jasko, Chris Selby, Mark Davey, Mark Wisbey, Joci Hunter, Martin Haigh, Anita Hamilton, Cathy Clarke, Kee Hean Lim and all those who have contributed in some way to the development of these ideas (even if it was unknowingly at the time.) All of these rivers flow through the Kawa Creative environment.
The next stage of development for Kawa Creative has now begun with a collaboration with John Pearson and Karen Linde.
More to come…
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