It has been some time since I wrote a blog for Kawa Creative, and it is with some excitement that I put this one together. First of all allow me to explain the lack of activity.
The last blog “Anxiety,” was published in June, just before the summer holidays. So there’s a clue. It has been a fantastic summer of festivals, road trips and fun times, but now it is back to work. Kawa Creative will be registered as a Not For Profit Company Limited by guarantee. We are very fortunate to have an excellent board of directors with some diverse skills and experience – more about that once we are up and running. We also have some exciting new projects in the pipeline as well as details of our pilot project which took place in March. But right now the one thing that is demanding all of my attention is the World Federation of Occupational Therapists 2014 Congress.
Many of the Kawa development team have submitted abstracts to the congress, and I am delighted to say that two have been accepted by Kawa Creative, and I will also be taking part in the pre-congress workshop along with Kee-Hean Lim, Jouyin Teoh and of course Professor Michael Iwama. I will be presenting on two subjects: the use of mobile technologies and the Kawa Framework as a data collection tool, and also the Kawa Poetics – the language of rivers. More of that later. What I am concerned with here is how did I get here?
Kawa Creative is not something that has been dreamt up over night, it has emerged from the quagmire and ill-defined waters that have sprung from the bedrock of continuous reflections on the application of the river metaphor. At Bradford University I was introduced to the model and was lucky enough to meet Professor Iwama, and gain a deeper understanding into the roots of this remarkable system for practice. I made regular contributions on the Kawa Model forum, which now seems like a life time ago, and in 2010, when Jouyin Teoh set up the Kawa Facebook page, we saw the development go from strength to strength. Since then the Kawa Model has become a point of exploration and conversation all around the world – from Scandinavia to South America, Australia to Scotland.
It was my regular posts on Facebook that created the momentum for the Kawa Creative blog and it was a chance meeting with Sue Walpole that gave rise to Kawa Created Ltd and our own particular approach to arts for health. There is also the Kawa Wiki page, and the river appears to be popping up all over the virtual and physical domains – therefore: “…the river is everywhere.” (Hesse).
I never knew where this journey would take us all, least of all where it would take myself. Exploring the Kawa world has always been just that: an exploration. There have never been any expectations or projections, we have resisted the temptation to formalise our research, preferring to keep to the phenomenological roots of this wonderful gift “from practitioners to practitioners.” This river for me has flowed through significant life events of the last seven years, and it has, at times, been a place of solace and gentle reflection. I have come to regard rivers as more than just geographical features that happen to run through our towns and cities (especially as it is our towns and cities which cluster around the rivers.) I now see rivers as the great story tellers, etching their life-flow into the very rock and earth. They are forces of nature which leave behind complex and inspiring narratives of destruction, creation, birth and death, and never ending change.
When the river eventually reaches the sea, it flows into a place with no centre; a mass of water which obeys a different set of physical forces; and the stories that have been told are washed away by the ocean to be reabsorbed and told again and again across the ages. There is a poetry to the way that flowing water interacts with its environment and it is this poetry that we should seek to facilitate in the lives of those for whom we provide a service – and indeed in our own lives.
It has been through following the poetry of the Kawa Model, seeking opportunities to interact with other professionals and explore this tool that I have come to this place. As I return to practice and raise my sights on new challenges, I find myself flowing into the ocean, where my story will be washed amongst the currents and waves of a much larger reality, reformed and retold.
As I look forward to June 2014 in Yokohama I am filled with excitement and exhilaration as I consider the adventure that we are going to have; and that is what it has all been – an adventure. For me that is the message central to the Kawa approach: your life is not written, nor is it a linear event: it ebbs and flows across time and space, and if you wish, you can be an explorer in that river, and I suppose that is how I got here – it has been an adventure, I am an explorer.
Now to work.
Kawa Creative - Reflections 