*This is a page of ponderance only, we will endeavour to create for children and youths, so as to build trust with the adults, before working with young writers, performance poets, and perhaps little artists.
Children have so much light…
There is a chronic misconception among us humans that the wisdom lies with the elders, which sometimes it may well do. But the light that exists and permeates from the souls of children and young adults who have been enabled to keep hold of their inwards safety and gifts of self-expression, it can express itself as indescribably wise, beautiful and meaningful. This is why we invite young creatives to work with us and to journey along the same publishing pathways as everyone else. Could there be anything safer than kids writing for kids, than a ten year old educating a five year old in story and song? Community can be reborn from such moments of shared age-appropriate wisdom.
Challenging paradigms is what we do best, by way of creating new stories and pathways for others who wish to seek themselves through a journey of discovery, exploration and conceptualised adventure. Learning is a journey, one that can narrow a person’s field of vision or expand it, along with their life to come. Working with us is an experience that will ignite a flame of passion that might never burn out, not when an identity is shaped, formed and nurtured from the inside-out, and thus encouraged to withstand the challenges faced when transitioning into adulthood.
An inwards anchor may be born from artistic development, a balancing anchorage point that supports resilience and/or acts as a self-soothing experience, a meditative one perhaps. Artistic activity might just offer a place to go during the coming darker days of life (adulthood will be full of them, right?). We are not necessarily here to ‘train’ professional artists, who a kid becomes will never be up to us. Rather, we are here to free them up towards spending spare time in a state of creativity, in a state of doing something, instead of watching t.v. for life.
“Modern education systems ensure The Arts are minimised in value, as well as ignored via strict assessments of the three main subjects, mathematics, English and the sciences. Yet even science is artistic in nature, but it has been turned into a regurgitation exercise, a way to mock what ‘experimental’ truly means, and once again, it narrows the world towards a determinable point, instead of widening the world into a view that can take in the infinite.”
Becoming oneself.
Becoming oneself before the adult world swallows up time and energy is the only viable solution towards avoiding an easily predicted identity crisis at a later age. Nowadays, too many want to be something else, feel something else; magazines, pop culture, unmanageable fitness regimes, all sold as the solution to a person’s suffering, when a main source of suffering can be identified as becoming fractured from your once full of light, beautifully divinely designed self. Creative outlets also nurture self-regulation and can often become a very subtle and undervalued way of reprocessing life’s traumas and pains.
To become oneself is to save oneself from many things, most especially from living a lifetime without knowing what your own voice sounds like, or from the pain of pretending to be someone you are not. Mainstream education systems encourage regurgitation, conformity to a concept, and very rarely instill a faith in oneself that translates into effective life-management strategies, nor a life born from innate creativity and talent. Faith in Change will offer the opportunity for young writers and artists to explore being themselves and creating from within, for that is the life of a true creative genius, many of whom are born, few of which may become self-actualised.
Who knows, maybe the kids carve their path towards a happy life as the main event, one they enjoy living, which may just safeguard them from ‘mental health’ decline. We cannot tell the children their futures, but we are able to grant them an enjoyment of the now, and to nurture a mindset that allows space to do such a thing. If your child(ren) flow with creative expression and show a talent for particular artistic pathways, we are here to nurture that element of who they are and to watch it grow, flower and fruit into a wholesome and contented lifestyle full of joyful experiences.
“The Arts, they never did have their day in the sunshine of the primary school, certainly not in secondary school either. We aim to create for The Education System, to support the workload of teaching staff, and to help provide fun learning opportunities for the kids. It’s going to be fun!“
Creativity is in our nature…
For millennia, human beings have created song, story and explored pictorial sense, as teachers we see how curious children and young people truly are, but we also see how that curiosity lessens at the hands of mainstream education, and even as a result of an overuse of television and other technologies. Such a passive approach to absorbing the world leaves your children at risk of malnourishment with regard to experiences, and thus, leaves them potentially under-nourished in terms of identity, worth, self, and even human connection, or connection to self, which is where a connection with the world must always begin for it to be anything resembling of meaningful.
Here at Faith in Change, we are designing a creative pathway style that allows for your child to utilise modern technology, but in such a way that encourages activity and a response to life and the world around them. To explore one’s own surroundings can turn into inspiration, as revealed very early on when children draw shapes, trees, animals and their families. Every journey begins with the first steps, and to leave a creative lull in any child’s life is a horrific neglect of vital life energy and creational force. Source energy comes from within, yet it is stunted, cut off, deprived and may very well eventually die having not been fed continually and with nourishing food, aka, the learning experience.
“Rest assured, criminal background checks are in place for all who will work with the children. Moreover, they will be professionally qualified and experienced in the field of teaching and learning, as well as them having lived freely as a creative for some time. For no one can lead the way home without having first found it for themselves.”
Safe to expand?
All creatives have had the safety to expand at some time in their life, to explore the self, and make mistakes without them being called as much, we’d rather label them as ‘opportunities to learn and grow, to revise and refine.’ Some people are born with a clear purpose in life, so much so that no matter what happens to them they still find their destiny waiting for them, even on the other side of recovery or spiritual awakening. For others, they were perhaps never seen enough to be brought to life and were left to dwindle as their identity was left to diminish.
We prefer the notions of avoidance and prevention. Should your child’s story become one of recognising who they were supposed to be in their late thirties, and them having to struggle to remember and retrain their psyche, it will be a journey of grief and suffering. They will be called upon by the light still laying dormant inside of them, and they will need to face every accumulated fear that has got in their way since they lost themselves in childhood or their youth. Every worry, pain and absent external validation, will require navigation and perhaps full healing before they are empowered to utilise their gifts again.
We advocate freeing the children NOW, so that they might live as free. So that they might live as themselves. Never knowing who they are is likely to become their biggest pain in life, one that is unidentifiable by the mainstream world for the time being. Sometimes, taking care of your child’s older self means taking effective care of their interests and talents right now, it also means taking responsibility for their artistic growth and never leaving it up to an education system that critically undervalues the artist in them, to the point of its extinction.
Will your child’s older self be thanking you when they note your part in their development and successful life narrative, or will they be delayed in discovering themselves as they notice that you, their parent, did not find value in who they were as a whole, that you failed to nourish this very vital element of their wholeness? Sadly, the choice is yours, not theirs, and it must be considered as an honour and duty to take care of the seeds they are born with, to water their insides, to nourish them with sunshine, and feed them with healthy nutrients. Whether these seeds live to grow into something magical called joy, or are left to wither and die, will always be up to the parent and/or carers of the child, at least until The Education System evolves.
“There are no good reasons for a mainstream education system to squash creative development and opportunity. It concerns us that people, including professional educators, accept and value a paradigm that deliberately denies the right to art and creative expression – a form of freedom and lived joy! Healthy ‘mental health’ can be effectively supported and sustained via the artistic faculties, and the system’s denial of the arts, an otherwise connective and nurturing community experience, may very well contribute towards the steep decline and deterioration of societal wellness among the young. Community breeds safety and togetherness, community is power and power leads to freedom and change. We do believe that if we work together, we can change things for the healthier, education system wise.”
Are you ready to join the revolution?
Are you a teacher who was squashed into the modern education box? Was your artistic flow denied? Are you able to recall those moments of magic still, those all true educators have experienced during those rare chapters of freedom accessible as a government employee? Are you tired of ‘The Box’, and feel ready to escape the cage you did not see waiting for you when you felt yourself light up throughout your studies and could not wait to inspire the tiny humans? Did you get lost to the pay cheque, to the security and safety of conformity because of the management/Ofsted team’s judgmental eyes? Did you leave your chosen profession because it was no longer what you chose, it had changed?
We will be developing a creative pathway for teachers, primarily a resources and development pathway, one focused on content creation. Years of planning in cycles, we simply wish to preserve the best stuff moving forward and to share it among the teaching community. Imagine having help. We would like to help teachers to rediscover the joy of being in their post, since without a joyful teacher, learning is unlikely to find and harness that joy. An elite design team, one that keeps up with the theory of the day, it’s where we are headed. Please step up to the plate, only if you can fill it with something worthy of nationwide digestion.
“Can you imagine what education would become if teachers were the ones creating the systems and curriculum, not politicians or corrupted experts in the field? A question I pondered throughout all of my waking life as an educator, and one I intend to discover the answer to, or at least the beginnings of an answer that may continue to form beyond our own lifetimes.”
Where do we start?
De-schooling is a thing homeschoolers commit to when children are observed to ‘lose’ parts of their character and confidence, or when elements of their apparent identity have been oppressed after they entered the system, one mis-designed to encourage conformity, less so individuality. Yet this does not mean the school experience cannot be utilised and harnessed as a form of reeducation in and of itself, in a way, we must educate children away from the digital world, help them unlearn what this busy and miscommunicating world might’ve taught them. We also feel, vehemently, that more life skills and safeguarding knowledge should be taught in secondary schools. Might we look to de-schooling parents for advice, ask them where we start with deprogramming the children and young people from this monster of a world, one preying on their still developing psyches?
When every teacher is forced to mirror and mimic certain practices (some of which hold value, no doubt) for Ofsted, for paperwork and other box-ticking exercises, it takes the heart out of it all. We are restoring the heart in this loosely defined and obscenely controlled and manipulated professional art form. Teachers studied towards a Bachelor of Arts, they act, they play, they spark gasps of excitement and encourage curiosity, we hope to put the heART back in it all (not that the ‘art’ part was ever installed efficiently in the first place).
“I can flow in the classroom, act with passion, intuition and force. But when I am ordered to prepare a list of open-ended questions to start off a lesson, and then close the learning with more closed and focused tasks, as well as making sure to assess every child by observation and follow up with notes and self-evaluation, my diluted energies tend to become fully depleted before I get halfway through a term. The kids lose out because they lose parts of me, the parts, more especially, that felt ignited and enlivened by the role I felt born to play in this story called life. My script has been written for me, where informed improvisation can be the thing to free both myself as well as the children.”
Teaching creativity and freedom of spirit…
Awakening is an ever-common phenomenon, one that restores the parts of the self the world took from too many of us. Waking up to one’s true nature, self and form can mean grieving the loss of these parts that were stolen by adulthood, and which might otherwise have been used to create the lifestyle you desired. Life is a creative force to be reckoned with, and there is a reason we are born with such abilities and gifts, the main reason being that we are meant to use them for the greater good and in service of life itself, that, or to simply enjoy being alive (one in the same, good energy breeds good energy).
However, when these natural skillsets are neglected by education systems; when parents have no knowledge of these characteristics hidden beneath poor systems of teaching and learning; when kids are glued to technology and increasingly at risk of developmental interruptions and malnourishment; do we sit idly by and do nothing to create change, all because those with the power, money and position of impact block our voices, experience and talent? I think not!
To be what you were born to become takes time, energy and a lot of guidance, faith in who you are, and the ability to navigate fear head on. To run from your own talents and/or natural abilities comes only from a lack of nurturing of those elements of self. Safety comes when you are connected inwards to your innate strengths and powers, and this strong sense of identity can be relied upon as an anchoring point of resilience during harder life chapters. We deny children their strength and ability to thrive as a whole and complex human by way of denying their rights to all art forms.
– Ana Maria Santuario, a born teacher, crippled by the system in too many ways and tired of the cage she was forced into.
“Reclaiming the power of autonomy, we answer to nobody but ourselves (and the law, mustn’t forget that). When you reclaim your power by way of creativity and talent harnessing, you feel the connection to the divine. I need not think my way to heaven, since that is a concept, and reality lay beyond and beneath conceptualisation. The great endeavor of an artist is to capture beauty, sense, feeling and thought in such a way that it is translatable, beyond vocabulary, language and even sight. Is a deaf and mute person any further away from God than a person who has the blessing of full sensory experience? I think not. The challenge presented to artists in this age of fairness and equality, is how do we deliver the light to all who are deserving of it, which means EVERYONE?”
Educational reform is coming…
Creativity is in everyday life and the world around us, to cook can become a thing of beauty and delight, it can serve a family or simply one’s own palette and health. To build a house can become a thing of creative prowess, although many new builds leave so much to be desired, long gone is the architectural awe of the past, the likes of sculped doorways, window frames and ceilings, or stained-glass stories channeling light into sanctuary and space. The reason being too much focus is now placed on economic, time and space saving. Time was creatively celebrated among the divine and nature, now it seems to celebrate self and money.
Creative self-expression can become life altering, using other mediums and modes of communication can open the door to reprocessing trauma and recovery maintenance, a thing vital in this age of mental health decline. Some experiences sit beyond vocabulary and require the safety of colour and line, to communicate trauma in such a modality as painting can open up healing and therefore recovery from the worst and most horrific of life experiences. Can you not imagine a world that has harnessed the powers of creative force and flow and empowered each child with the light of safe self-expression, self-regulation and life-skill/therapeutic techniques?
“To tell a story takes courage, fairly frequently the telling of one’s more painful stories comes at the cost of immediate personal safety. To reawaken painful memories can return a person to that moment of lived suffering, and without support and a professional point of safety, relapse presents as a recurring risk. Time was, a war dance celebrated battle, explored the concept of death and thus grief, and collectively served the community in their navigation of such darkness. These days, the film industry has taken traumatic experience and narrated it into entertainment. These are scary days, ones we are yet to feel the full consequence of. Preventative measures are the new life necessity, and I do believe that a modern education paradigm must account for such a perspective.”
Art supports wellness, wellness supports the arts…
Art serves humanity in so many ways and this can no longer be doubted nor ignored, there is too much revealing to the contrary. The arts offer up the power to engage, to capture a heart and a mind, to inspire and change; the power of artistry must not be underestimated, nor the capacity the world holds to use such power with ill-intent. Quantifying visceral impact is an impossibility, but might we trust in what is known, in what is experienced by millions as they wander Le Louvre or L’Orangerie? One cannot measure the impact of a painting upon a person’s life, nor a song, statistics can be useful, but not when designing the years of experience that amount to a whole and worthwhile education.
With over a decade of learning happening at school, do we under nourish in thought and action, a chapter of human development that is in place to serve the masses by preparing them to live life well, equally, and in good health? Do we let down the young almost daily as a result? Are we trying hard enough to meet their social and emotional needs? Is the system itself responsible for a lot of the anxiety, stress and even depression or suicide risks we see on the rise? Have the children been punished with an unachievable line of sight, one upheld by popular culture, and is such a situation creating a sense of lack, worthlessness and defeat? Finally, are the arts the answer?
“Technology may have its place in the world, but it should not determine a day, it should never be used to regulate a mood, placate, numb, or silence, a practice all too common. Years ago, an infant in a pram would watch the world go by and eventually find their place in it, many now sit glued to a screen and hold no presence or connection to their external surroundings – scary, only ever very scary. There can be no greater experience than life itself, than using your hands to make or your feet to move and run and dance; there is no vision I have for my own young that does not include being glued to themselves, feeling stuck to a core identity, as opposed to a screen. To rob a child of their life experience is what technologically reliant parents are doing to these poor growing and developing minds and bodies, those they chose to make promises to simply by birthing them.”
Art is light expressing itself through human form…
No wonder the darkness wants to quench the light, it is the very thing that will destroy its grip over the world. Money, greed, power, all sinful wastes of time, environment and at its worst, of life. Too much history reveals the ease with which elitists have chosen to sacrifice safety in want of power, control and wealth. Why do we assume that people changed, they did not, the illusions just became a lot smarter and can now even infiltrate homes daily via media sources and technology programming (think advertising cookies, or porn pop-ups).
There is a power to the freedom of creation, art has changed the world more than once, especially because art can help to change the minds and thoughts of an individual. Art plays at bending reality, challenging truth, and expanding on what is real or not real. Impactful artists have gone down in history for a reason, there is something beyond words, let’s call it a mirrored experience, which cannot be ignored forever. The arts transcend culture, religion and time, collectively speaking, we doubt anybody has even looked at a beautiful church, Hindu temple, mosque or synagogue, and critiqued such magnificent architecture.
To serve the light, and in turn, oneself and humanity, we must seek beauty, and preserve and sustain it, so that the treasure of simply being oneself, of being alive, comes to be valued above all else.
“There is a human connectedness yet to break free of social prejudices and paradigms of success driven narratives. We think it might be the helping one another part that’s truly missing. We are healing the world, starting with you guys, the teachers, for the unhealed cannot heal anybody.”
