I learnt so much working with each of the Expedition Parties. It deepened my understanding of working with school aged students and it also deepened my understanding of the themes selected for exploration: Space, Light and Earth. These themes are important within my own arts practice and being able to open them up to the fertile minds of these young explorers’ revealed new perspectives that I would not have otherwise seen.

As part of their ephemeral art practice the Space Expedition Party created a large joint work that had to develop the concept of space. Collaborative processes can be tricky for anyone to work through but I was really pleased with the way that each of these groups worked through their ideas, compromised and reasoned, and cooperated in making their collective works. The Space group came up with a great solution to their art work. They created this Space Island (the proper name I forget but maybe one of them will add it as a comment for me, please  !!). One large space which was then sub-divided into smaller regions which included an abandoned beach shack, a farm, a wildlife park and camping ground nature reserve, a pier, a pub and was centred by a beautiful black hole.

Watching the kids negotiate with each other as they created their miniature world was really cool- it gave me an insight into how humans divide the world, compete for resources, practice democracy and create the human space in which we live. Working with this group helped to develop my comprehension of the overlappings of space: from the Macro Space of the Cosmos and Space’s emergence from the big bang to our planet, the atmosphere and our human Spaces of inside and outside, private, public, personal space, emotional space and sacred space to the Micro Spaces of mini beasts and micro-organisms…. Our world really is multi-dimensional, how amazing is that!!