Arrived in Zambia!

Welcome to the Creative Kids International (CKI) blog!

For those of you that have been involved with CKI you’ll know that thanks to all your help and support, we finally managed to raise enough money to return to Zambia! We (Mia and Sian) arrived back in Lusaka on 4^th February and are staying in an area called Kalundu.

For the past couple of weeks we have been settling back in, having lots of meetings and planning our work for the coming months………as well as starting work building a giant cockroach!

It’s been really lovely to come back and see everyone we worked with last year, and we’re really excited about spending the next few months here working with such a talented and brilliant group of people! Thanks so much to Barefeet for inviting us back! We were also really excited to meet the latest Barefeet baby! Alexander Mwamba Chanda born on Sunday 7^th February, and only 4 days old when we went to visit him – congratulations Grace & John!

PLANS FOR THIS TRIP……..

BAREFEET THEATRE & THE ZAMBIAN CHILDREN’S CLIMATE CONFERENCE

We’ve returned to work primarily with Barefeet Theatre, who work with 25 children’s centres across Lusaka. The Children’s Centres are for children who have previously lived on the streets, with some of the centres offering drop-in services for children who are still living on the streets. Barefeet run performance based workshops with the children, and CKI work in partnership with them, offering creative visual art workshops to compliment Barefeet’s programme.

The focus of our work during this trip is the Zambian Children’s Climate Conference (ZCCC) funded by UNICEF, where children from all over Zambia will meet to discuss climate change and leave with ideas about how to raise awareness and deal with climate issues in their own communities. Barefeet Theatre are working in partnership with UNICEF and the Education Post to host a week long youth festival to run alongside the ZCCC during the last week in April (26th April – 2^nd May). CKI are co-ordinating much of the creative visual aspects of the festival, including the carnival procession, a fashion show, exhibition and eco-world.

CKI will be running regular workshops with 5 children’s centres over the next 9 weeks leading up to the festival. The workshops will focus on the theme of climate change, and using collected and found recycled materials the children will design and make costumes to wear at the carnival procession and fashion show. The 5 themes for the carnival procession (each centre will concentrate on one theme) are; Nature, Water, Air, Rubbish & Animafwafwas (bizarre imaginary creatures which are the only things to have survived a world destroyed by humans!).

The workshops run by CKI will run alongside the Barefeet workshops (which take place in all 25 centres) for which the curriculum is ‘Me and My World’. These workshops will tell a story of Dr Mkandawire a time traveller who is searching to find out about the effects of climate change, and with the help of the Barefeet children to save the world!

As part of the festival Barefeet will be devising and performing a piece of theatre in 4 compounds (areas where the majority of people live in the city, which are densely populated and often without good facilities such as; sanitation, electricity, water etc) in Lusaka based on a story about a world where everything is destroyed apart from a giant cockroach! After studying some real life samples of cockroaches we collected in our house, CKI and some of the Barefeet facilitators (Richard, John, Michael & Bright) have started making the giant cockroach, which will be walked through the compounds and used in the carnival procession to symbolize the only creature left in a destroyed world.

The cockroach structure is made from bamboo, which we had to go and cut down – no easy task, but luckily we had the guys to help who made it look so simple! We will be planting some trees to compensate for chopping down the bamboo trees. The structure will be covered in recycled and found materials nearer the time of the festival – until then it’s sitting in our garage looking like a limo covered in tarpaulin!

We are also making a giant world for the children to roll along the street at the beginning of the carnival procession.

NGOMBE OPEN COMMUNITY SCHOOL………

Today we returned to Ngombe Community School to meet with the teachers Eunice and Elizabeth and plan workshops for the coming months. As with the children’s centres we will be running regular creative visual art workshops based on the theme of climate change at the school. We will work with 2 classes (one younger & one older) who will come along on carnival day to wear the costumes they have made and participate in the procession with the children from the centres.

It was lovely to see the banner made at Knowle Park Primary School in Bristol hanging in the school alongside photos of CKI workshops last year at the school, and the children’s work being exhibited in Bristol.

SAMBILILA PROJECT: THE CHRISTINE NURSERY………

We’re also taking some time out of Lusaka in March (21^st – 25^th) to work with a nursery school in Kashitu near Kapiri Imposhi (about 4 hours outside of Lusaka). We will be running 3 days of workshops with the teachers and the children, looking at ways of introducing and improving creative educational methods in the classroom, something that is often lacking in Zambian schools due to lack of resources and training.

So as you can see it’s going to be a busy few months! We will try to update this blog as much as possible. If you want to find out more about CKI and see photos of past trips, workshops, exhibitions and fundraisers visit www.myspace.com/creativekidsinternational join the facebook group ‘Creative Kids International’, or find us on www.twitter.com or e-mail us on creativekids.int@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading!

Sian & Mia.x