Cloud Work is a film and performance exploration into collective connection within the everyday spaces of Heron Academy, using different everyday materials as tools: dust sheets, tarpaulins, elastic bands.
We used the story of the cloud as a frame that could hold together our different explorations. Each session was structured around different movements with materials. The proposal for the sessions focused on both the adults working in the school and the young people too.
The ideas in the story were created by all the people in the space of the sessions, as well as from input from people in the school outside of the direct space of each session. For example, the idea of the cloud came from the strong focus in the morning daily routine on weather, and that when the project started, in September, there were many clouds in the sky. And that the students strongly responded to the idea of a cloud when they were working with the dust sheet, following the morning weather routine. The story then grew following the engagement of students and adults in the movement of the dust sheet cloud: up and down, around and around, blowing through the school as it did. People in the school who witnessed the sessions from afar also contributed to the story by talking about them afterwards, by noticing different things that the cloud had done or not done, things to change, things they had thought of.
Each week, we built on things that we had discovered in the previous week. For example, that if, when you have lifted the dust sheet cloud up, you let it go at the top, it floats up and up, and then comes down in a different point each time. Or, that if you are in the middle of this cloud and put your hand up, it might go through it! Or, that if you are under this cloud blowing down the corridor, it might shred itself into fragments! We explored through experiencing the material, our own bodies with the material, the interaction between our bodies, the material, other people’s bodies and in our everyday spaces of the school: classrooms, playground, corridors, hall, lift, stairs, dining room, space in front of the coffee shop, the space of the buses in the morning. Did the everyday spaces change to fit the cloud? Did the cloud change to fit the spaces? Did we change to fit the cloud? Did the cloud change to fit us?
Once we had explored the dust sheet cloud quite a bit, it became clear that for us to feel together and inside the cloud more easily, and in order for the cloud to travel, for those classes that wanted this, a more secure cloud was needed (one that didn’t shred quite so easily when journeying/getting caught on things): the blue tarpaulin took this role. There was also input from people in the school community regarding sustainability and the dust sheets, which was important. So there were different blue tarpaulin clouds to suit different cloud needs: some with holes in, some lined with shiny, reflective materials, some plain. Some big, some small, some on the ends of umbrellas that could travel down corridors held over wheelchairs quite easily. We explored the blue interior space of the tarpaulins together, using different types of light, sound, movement tasks. What is it like creating this internal bodily space together?
The blue elastic bands became a third cloud work material for some classes that responded to this material. How could we move together, connected by blue elastic, through the different spaces of the school? How could we explore an inside feeling of the cloud without physically being inside something?
Part of the sessions was an offer of challenge or a level of collective risk-taking (with the understanding that this is so different for each person, depending on their own life experiences) in order to know more about our interconnected edges. What we like, dislike, find hard, find easy, need from others, can give others. What can we learn from each other in our differences? And what commonalities do we have? The metaphor of the cloud, in conversations with some adults, was also about dealing with difficulty together, being together in that challenge or struggle. What do we do when the cloud gets stuck in the door? Stuck in the tree? Stuck in the lift? What do we do when we all get overwhelmed in the cloud? Or feel tired or uninspired or dizzy or unwell or unsupported? How do we support each other to move through this together? To move, for example, connected with elastic bands, down the stairs, when we are scared of heights? There were many moments of difficulty and challenge in the work, that we explored collectively. And then how, alongside these, do we find moments of joy in togetherness? There was also so much joy in the cloud. The story ended with a joyful celebration of the cloud, that the cloud will stay, that we will stay in the cloud, together.
The last step of the film was recording the words of the story by young people as narrators. These had come from ideas created week on week, through gestures made in the sessions; through things that the adults said in the sessions; through things that the young people said; through conversations outside of the sessions with people in the school. And then, in this last step, having written the cloud story down, the story was moulded and changed through the narrators who spoke it, who added their own ideas, emphases, thoughts, into the words. The word ‘transform’ came entirely from a young person on the very last day of recording the words, and fitted well with my experience of the project. Being in the school for this project, and working with adults and young people in each class regularly, and with the school staff as a whole, taught me a huge amount about interconnection, community, care, about the transformation that can take place through collectivity.
The ideas for the proposal came from my own previous practice explorations, from film work with John Chilton School in 2023, Lost in the Maze, as well as taking inspiration from artists and theorists such as Mia Mingus on disability justice and access intimacy, Paolo Freire and bell hooks on liberatory pedagogies, Lygia Pape on collective performance, Lama Rod Owens on interconnectedness and on being with difficulty alongside joy, Joanna Grace and her book on PMLD ‘Sensory-Being for Sensory Beings’.
Below are behind the scenes photos as well as the final film!
By Katherine Smith
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