Transcript

KAREN TAYLOR

So we have been working on retelling the story of Wangari’s Trees of Peace through music, drama and dance.

JANE CEREXHE

The project has grown out of our partnership with Mary Troup, and Mary Troup, who is obviously involved in Quakers.

MARY TROUP

I’m Mary Troup. I’m a storyteller, musician. I’ve been working in community music for all the last 22 years.

KAREN TAYLOR

We were lucky enough to have Mary, come in and read a story to the children.

MARY TROUP

I told them a story about the Amazon Rainforest. And I put some music with it, and the children were interested to know. How do you tell stories with music? How do you develop the music? How do you, begin to own the story?

KAREN TAYLOR

That kind of inspired myself and Mary to think about working together to create, a project where the children could retell a story, creating songs, creating dances, relating to that.

MARY TROUP

I wanted to find a story that combined issues to do with climate justice and with peace. And I came across the story of Wangari.

JUDY

There was a lot of emotions packed into this story. So it’s it’s kind of it’s very nice, it’s very cheery at the start. She goes to America, she’s doing well, but then she comes back and it all crumbles because all the trees have gone.

NIHAL

Well Wangari is, like really confident and she wants to save the world. Not like the men that have been cutting down the trees.

MARY TROUP

Then the whole world hears of Wangari’s trees and of her army of women who planted them.

CALUM

She was even put in prison. But her work had already inspired so many people across Kenya and not just Kenya, actually Africa itself.

JUDY

She was the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. So I think it was really good that it was someone of her gender and her heritage just making a stand.

DIANE FIRTH

What we’ve been working with with Oakgrove, over many years in different forms, has been the story line approach. So we call it global story lines and each of the stories, they look at a global issue that has local consequences as well, and explores peace and justice through that lens.

KAREN TAYLOR

The performance is made up of lots of different scenes which retell the story, and we did this through initially reading the story to the children and then getting them to summarise and chunk it down into different segments. We then built those scenes around music that Mary and the students had brought to us. There’s opportunities for the children to create words. You would give them one verse and then they work on the second, the third and the fourth verse.

NIHAL

The journey of making this performance is like, you’re really in the story and you’re re-enacting it like you’re Wangari and you’re planting trees.

MARY TROUP

I’ve seen them really take ownership of this story. They really know the story, and they’re really passionate about the issues that they’re exploring.

CALUM

We have developed a lot since we first started. We started off with one song and that was it. And then it became a dance. And now we’ve got half the story written and we’re still going.

NIHAL

I think the scariest part for her is when she was wanting to plant trees, but the men didn’t let her. I think how she overcome that fear is she thought in her head, I will not give up. I’m still going, going to do this for my family and my friends and everyone else that’s supporting me while I am doing this.

KAREN TAYLOR

These things are tricky even for us as adults. You know, we can sort of be paralysed by fear around them. So when we do them through a character, there’s enough emotional distance that we can engage and then step out and discuss objectively how it felt for our character, not for us, but for our character. So we find drama is a really powerful tool for exploring those issues, of sort of peace and justice, that can be very, very challenging.

MARY TROUP

But what Wangari did, was she really stood up for the need to preserve the forests, to preserve the irrigation of the land, to grow the crops, and the children really understand.

CALUM

She made sure never to give, give up. She was always just... I can’t find the words. It’s just amazing.

KAREN TAYLOR

They really like the message of never give up and the determination and doing the right thing, even though some people may be telling you not to.

SADHIL

My favourite part during the performance was when we do like the Jambo dance.

KAREN TAYLOR

This is giving the children a voice to share these important issues with their schoolmates, with their families, and with the wider community as well. It worked really well with my class this year because term one, we had a project called Garden Detectives and we learned all about trees and planting and why that’s so important, why the trees are so important. So they already had the kinda scientific knowledge, but being able to link it in to the Wangari story and, you know, educating them around that and how it’s not just ‘oh this is a project we do at school’, it’s like this is a real life issue that is going to affect your future. And you can take charge of this. You can have an impact.

CALUM

I think it’s important that young people’s voices are heard in places like the Scottish Parliament.

MARY TROUP

It’s just such a voyage of discovery, working with the children, helping them to find their voice, honouring their voices as young people and young citizens of Scotland.