​
‘In any creative work, be it the artist or the artisan, the creatve person unites with the material they are working with, which symbolises the world outside him/herself. The worker and the artefact become one. The human being becomes one with his creation. ‘ Erich Fromm
The word Poiein in Ancient Greek (ποιεá¿–ν) means making. It is where the word Poetry comes from. Plato had pointed at the connection between craft-making and poetry, calling us to gaze at the rich worlds of form and meaning that come to life when we take raw material from our landscape and create with it. It is possible, when we look at a handcrafted object, to appreciate the emotion and soul life that the maker had infused in it.
​



Sefrou is located in the heart of the middle Atlas. Traditionally, a market town located amidst fertile farming lands, it is known for its fruit orchards, cherry festival and the large Jewish community that lived there up until the last century. Sefrou is still home to a large community of local artisans, metal smiths, woodworkers, weavers and button makers. Though the community is still thriving, few are the ones of the young generation who wish to learn these skills.
​
Visiting local crafts people in their workshops, we will learn about their work and daily lives as a way to get a sense of the place through the people and their working spaces. An orientation of the city from the inside out hosted by Culture Vultures, will lead us into a deeper relationship with Amazigh women who spin and weave and we will participate in a hands own textile workshop.
We will be introduced to ‘The Loom in Local Rituals’ and how women used the loom as a sacred medium for protection. On Sunday we will make a day trip to a mountain market town in the Middle Atlas where the wool comes from, to meet women who practice unbroken textile traditions in the region.
Alongside these visits our work will consist of listening to the stories that emerge from our activities, as well as engage with traditional stories from around the world to bring into clearer focus the role of craft-making in the life of the Soul. On our last day we will share these stories in a storytelling evening (no previous experience necessary). Daily shamanic practices will help us access ancestral knowledge and seek healing for modern day’s rupture between skill and community, craft and Time.
​
​
KARMIT EVEN-ZUR
EARTH SPEAKS
Praxis Mundi​
A collaborative psycho-magical act of metaphoric
redistribution of power along the 0º Meridian
​
Jane Glenzinska
EN / ES / FR
​
Exploring the liminal spaces where Earth meets Sky, East meets West, the mundane meets the sacred and where the land crumbles into the sea, Praxis Mundi is the emerging story of a box of Selenite crystals collected at Longitude 0.04 on the South coast of England and sent southwards along the Greenwich Meridian (0 degree longitude).
Praxis Mundi is a conceptual and collaborative work that hopes to become a collection of on-line texts, imagery and sound, as the journey of the box is traced, and the energy of the selenite is concentrated and dissipated along the meridian, its synapses and networks, as it is received by different people in different countries.
This project hopes to creatively enrich what we know about the 0º meridian line with stories collected as the box travels along its path, which we hope will reach the crossing with the Equator, in the vicinity of Ghana, as an offering and historical reparation.
​
Jane Glenzinska
Brighton
Peacehaven
Newhaven

Peacehaven

Mid winter dawn


Peacehaven
Emilio Gallego
Requena
Almassora

Receiving the box, Emilio is inspired to add to it a few stones and artefacts from his own collection

...A meteorite from the Sahara desert that his uncle received in Laayoune, Jacinto de Compostela quartz from Requena and a selenite from Castillo de Chirel, are among the stones that are added to the collection

The box now repacked to send onwards to the next collaborator

Receiving the box, Emilio is inspired to add to it a few stones and artefacts from his own collection
"Stones are partners with which we build the epistemological structures that may topple upon us. They are ancient allies in knowledge making.
...The philsopher Michel Serres argues that stone is the foundation of story at every archeological layer of human history..."
Jeremy Jerome Cohen / Stone