Daidarabo and Holiburn 2013 – Let’s repair Nanatsudo Park
DAIDARABO AND HOLIBURN 2013 “Let’s repair the Nanatsudo Park”
July 23 – 26, 2013 11:00-14:30
Nanatsudo Park and Kunita Elementary School (Mito, Japan)
I have developed Mending Mito 2012 to a workshop programme which is held in an English Garden called Nanatsudo Park in 2013. Working with the neighborhood Kunita Elementary School children, we repaired damaged places with the remaining leftover items from previous projects, 230 items, based on my imaginary story of a careless English giant.
This is introduction of the workshop.
There is an English giant in Nanatsudo park. He is a bit careless and he has broken some places in the park. It was unintentional. He is tender hearted giant so he really want to repair those places that he carelessly made but he has no idea how to repair. He decided to write a letter to the neighborhood Kunita Elementary School children to ask them to help him to repair the damaged places in the park.
One day a big letter written in very poor Japanese and two boxes were delivered at the school. The letter said “You must know about me through Makiko Yamamoto. I am an English giant living in Nanatsudo Park. I have broken many places in the park by mistake. I want to repair them but I don’t know how to do it. Will you please help me? Can you please use theoe items in the attached two boxes that I brought from the UK? I am looking forward to hearing from you.”
I conducted the workshop as a person who accidentally met the English giant and played a role like a bridge between the children and the English giant. 45 children were divided into 9 groups and each group explored the park to look for the damaged places. We discussed how the English giant made those damages and how we could repair them. At the end the repairs were carried out at 13 locations in the park. On the last day, each group made a big letter for the English giant telling where/how they repaired and I promised the children that I would hand the reports to the English giant on last day of the workshop.