It has been a long day, full of different emotions. Meeting new people, new places, new voices, different accents. But I specially would like to remark a couple of moments that were important to myself and that made me think a lot.
After the opening session, and the plenary session, I took part in the workshop on Meaning Making. Erin Cannan and Elizabeth Castle from Bard College (USA) introduced a process they use for reflecting about their community practices. Through 9 steps you think and write down the experiences you have with people from the community your project works with. This exercise makes you think not only about the anecdotes, but also about why they are important to you, by evoquing intersections with your own personal life experiences. This way you get to identify your feelings, and recognize them from objective events.
Although in the school support project i’m part of, we usually write our experiences down, and we consider our feelings -and we’re planning to make a book based on anecdotes coming from our practice- this exercise has given me a new perspective and some good ideas on how to do it better. (So guys there in Buenos Aires: be prepared to write!…. Y told you I was going to take advantage of this conference.)
The second remarkable moment of the day was during the Mac Jannet Prize Ceremony. After the speeches, the winners were called to the stage to receive the prize. I was sitting next to Oscar Garcia (our Extension Secretary) when the video on the Programme was shown. It was the video produced by the Pearson Foundation, whose photographers we had met in Buenos Aires. Now I understand why they didn’t want to show us the preview of that video… (Thank you JR and Rob, great job!) It really made us drop some tears… and also the public’s!
Finally, I would like to say thanks again to the Mac Jannet Foundation, and the Talloires Network for this prize, that gives us a huge recognition to the work done till now, and incentives us to go on. This is a collective prize, given to all the students, teachers, administrative persons and university authorities that make this Programme work every day.
