Edlyn: Let’s start with describing your role in SEEDLINGS.
Gua Khee: As the designers and facilitators of this programme, we discussed with the Esplanade team to get a sense of the concept that we’d like to go in with. The decision was to follow a similar format as per last year which is to centre around a few key productions and then to have engagements with the artists around it as the kind of scaffolding around it so that we’re also thinking about the relationship aspect among the SEEDLINGS’ children.
We also thought about the experience of the children - how do we shape the programme to be something that is both in line with their interests as well as in a sense, achieve the objectives that were set out at the beginning of the programme? We also looked at strengthening the relationship between Esplanade and the children and the kind of very deep engagement with the programmes at March On.
Faye: I felt like we were camp directors as well. The SEEDLINGS programme was happening alongside the children having their regular lives like schools. Hence, it was always very pleasurable to be able to spend that time with the children on the Saturdays or whenever we met, knowing that we were requesting for them to leave the regularity and routine of their established lives and then creating that space for them to have an experience together. We hoped to create a space of wonder, of friendship, also have opportunities for them to think critically about things that they might not see in other aspects of their day-to-day lives.
Edlyn: Are there key values or questions or ways of thinking that are particularly important to you respectively in your practice and how do they align with how you approach SEEDLINGS as a programme?
Faye: Working with researcher-writer Jill Tan in my personal capacity over the past few years, I came to kind of derive three elements that are important to me in my work with children. One of which is looking at care, another looking at agency and the third one, release.
Within SEEDLINGS, it’s not necessarily like everything is in harmony; that there’s a lot of work there. I think for me it was the release of our power as facilitators, designers, adults and of certain expectations. It helps us to be able to be more responsive to whatever situations or the actual people in front of us.
Gua Khee: I think Faye and I work well together because we believe very strongly in the importance of care, and care as being that quality of being alive to each other to listen, to not necessarily jumping into immediate judgment or trying to like fix things, solve problems but really just being like, ‘okay what do you need right now?’ and if you are not at the space, or if you’re not at a point where you’re able to articulate what you need, that’s okay as well . We are happy to just sit with you. I think that was really the approach that we were taking with the various SEEDLINGS children.
I feel that care is not just all about being soft and giving, but also about orientating ourselves such that we find pleasure in other people’s well-being.
When the children are not having a good day or if they are just struggling with the activities for whatever reason, we try to invite them back into the big group. If they did not feel up to it. we also tried finding other ways for them to engage that was equally generative, pleasurable and nourishing.
