Adventure in Kapkazy
On 14th – 15th June a group of participants of a project experienced unusual adventure in Kapkazy School of Sensitivity. People who were preparing to work as a local animator went there to improve their workshop and went through an outgoing trainee, which aim was to get another important abilities which are needed for being an animator. The workshops were led by Mrs. Beata Domaszkiewicz, a chairman of Association Yard Angels, and also educator of the street and a restless spirit, sensible for every human activity, who was also responsible for passing knowledge.
We started our journey in sun and ended in the same way. On the way to Kapkazy they started to learn sensitivity. In a park scenery, on the bench near the Castle in Szydłowiec, there was a meeting with Mrs. Kasia, who made friends with gathered folk instruments and showed how easy it and difficult was to make the rhythm. Singing birds were accompanying the sounds of violins, and instead of lights at the stage the sun was shining through the leaves on the trees. On the route the group also visited potter`s workshop in a hundred-year hut and the author of toys. Every place evoked amusement and it must be said that the most often heard noise was the sound of happiness. In Rędocin in potter`s workshop of Henryk Rokita and his son Wiesław the bravest tried to make bowls by themselves. Participants could go into the stove, where all the dishes and decorations were baked. They were amused by the gathered works and were haggled with the prices of gifts.
At toys manufacturer animators were riding wooden horses and bursting with laughter from a wooden frog, ladybird and cow but also were amused by the wooden educational toys and those which are remembered by our grandmothers. They finally got to Kapkazy, a village in Świętokrzyskie Mountains in Bodzentyn commune. A calm hostess and surrounding quiet welcomed guests. Everybody was a little bit shocked but then the bewilderment was changing into contentment, in discovery of something nice, amazing, different … Ewa Skowerska-Kosmalska and Mariusz Kosmalski moved out from a town to realize their own dreams several years ago. They started a ceramics workshop with a gallery. Classes are conducted in a barn, which is adapted to this kind of classes. A big grassy lawn and fruit orchard is available for the participants. A charming, quiet place – full of greenery – make the possibility of contact with nature and art. Participants made their clay artistic works there: witches, devils, cows and angels and painted accordingly to their thoughts, amazing fish.
Participants also visited ‘Laboratory of Local Taste’. Culinary workshops were led in a summer kitchen. A word ‘ laboratory’ is not usually collocated with local. A laboratory is a mysterious place, almost inhuman in its sterility. This one was different. Witches, hags, herbalist were and still are mysterious, however their laboratories, meadow, forest, fallows are close and available to everybody, and local taste is created in connection of tradition and creativity through working and playing together. The hostess invited everybody tired of noise, plastic ads, chaos to the laboratory. The local is not only the taste but also smell, sound, colours and beauty of landscape. They made flat cakes and also tried on clothes: scarfs and aprons there. They mentioned about memories, superstitions, heard legends and were talking about remembered tastes, smells, people, adventures and longing. Then there was a wonderful trip to the middle of field, where to everybody`s surprise wonderful vases were seen which protected the sources of water appreciated by settlers, who permanently use of them. They could listen to stories about where they came from and try the power of spring water.
They visited also horse stud in Swedish hosts, who lead a small farm in Góry Świętokrzyskie and take care of 8 horses. We could make friends with the horses, touch them, touch their fringes and admire, admire…
In the evening there was a theatre. This theatre is a group of friends, people with different talents and temperaments, who escaped from a city to a village, to look for another quieter life. They create artistic shows on the basis of fairy tales and legends from Świętokrzyski region, funny stories of human`s life. Sometimes children and visitors play with them. They learn singing and playing together. They act also in cities, take part in different workshops and lead a theatrical workshops. Visitors were amused by the actors and hosts with the story about a devil and a girl, where the devil was defeated by folk wisdom and was harnessed to work, and a life on the world was rolling over in happiness without devil`s tricks and temptation in love and harmony. There was also a presentation of instruments mostly unknown like a lyre and a zither. On the second day the group spent their time on classes of pedagogy of experiences and also on group designing of cultural and social event built on resources of Kowala commune. Three teams presented three wonderful ideas, and during presentation they showed different talents, which they couldn`t have known. That is why these workshops were also exploratory. Apart from exterior world the group discovered each other and it was a fascinating process.
These new pictures, events, people, unexpected stories would be the richness for every participant of the workshops. They could the inspiration for individual ideas and thoughts for common projects. Outgoing workshops were organized within the project ' Social welfare is very often effective’ realized by the local Social Welfare Centre in Kowala, Measure 7.1 Human Capital Operational Programme, Sub-measure 7.1.1 Development and dissemination of active integration of the social welfare centres co-funded by the European Union through the European Social Fund.
