MOVE ME
creative workshop sessions
A MOVE ME SESSION
Creates a space where people can see more clearly what is happening in their lives
Uses drama and movement to embody thoughts, feelings, desires and aspiration
Helps people to be interconnected, empowered and pro-active
Inspires hope, ecological systems-awareness and species-consciousness
MOVE ME #5 is happening at Whittington Park Community Centre on Friday 14th November 2015 6pm-9pm and on Friday 28th November 6pm-9pm FIND OUT MORE & REGISTER
MOVE ME #1 happened on Sunday 24th September 2023 from 3pm to 7pm at Whittington Park Community Centre , Holloway, London. Read more
MOVE ME #2 happened on Sunday 12th November 2023 at Schumacher College Dartington, Totnes, Devon. Read more
MOVE ME #3 happened on Saturday 3rd February 2024 from 11am – 3pm at De Groene Hemel, Overbrakerpad 2, Westerpark 1014 Amsterdam. Read more
MOVE ME #4 happened on Wednesday 6th November 2024 from 2.30pm – 6pm at Olive Academy, Cambridge. Read more
What is MOVE ME?
A ‘move me’ session creates a space where people can see more clearly what is happening in their lives and the life around them. It helps people to be interconnected, empowers them and activates them. Through the use of drama and movement exercises it enables the embodiment of thoughts, feelings, desires and aspirations. By looking experimentally at images, movement and scenes it inspires hope, ecological systems-awareness and ‘species’ consciousness of humanity.
What happens?
The starting point is to gain and share a sense of being centred, of being fully present, safe and at ease. Feeling the spirit of play is crucial to this. It proceeds to engage with movement from the point of view of stillness. Honestly observing what is happening to ourselves and others is encouraged. Becoming more ‘body’ aware in ourselves flows into being aware of others and taking up an embodied relationship with others. This helps us to create images, movement and scenes, inspired from both inside and outside us. Stories and narratives may be felt and recognised but no conclusions are drawn nor interpretation given but there is a reflection on what has been experienced.
All of this can happen in a 3 hour session given good circumstances.
Who?
With years of experience as a theatre director, working in drama academies, directing courses and providing the basis for deep creative processes that release inspiration and serious play, Jonathan Chadwick is a master at working with groups to create imaginative spaces where ideas and aspirations take on embodied forms.
Rooted in dramatic theatre and performance he combines influences from the work of Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, Philipe Gaulier and the precepts of Motokiyo Zeami and Constantin Stanislavsky. His work on activating change through drama relates to the work of Joanna Macy.
He is trained in Inner Qigong and Movement Shiatsu and has studied alongside leading Alexander Technique teachers. He has recently been influenced by Arawana Hayashi’s Social Presencing Theatre. He is a writer and a Master of Science in Ecological Economics. He has delivered creative workshop sessions in the UK and internationally in Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, Turkey, Armenia, Italy, Algeria, Palestine and China.
Who is it for?
Activists, workers, organisers, artists and people who wish to refresh and reflect upon the sense of their life’s journey. This work is suitable for all abilities and talents. The work can enhance already on-going creative processes and training.
The creative workshop sessions involve people in a series of games, exercises and improvisations designed to create a good working group and a space of enactment. But these components are difficult to describe briefly.
Thoughts about MOVE ME by Jonathan Chadwick
My work in MOVE ME is a condensing and a fusion of different influences and methods that have impacted on me as a theatre practitioner. Theatre space, the space of drama, replicates social space. The world of the drama with its tensions and movements are like the world we live in – figures in a landscape. So one strong root of the work is how our bodies feel these ‘actions at a distance’ and how images of the world can be composed by images of bodies in space. And then how we witness these configurations that we are both inside and outside of. What impulses arises to move in one way or another? So the work in a MOVE ME session starts with focusing on the elements of the body: the skin, the muscles, the bones and the inner organs and the role that the connective tissue – the fascia – plays in bringing these elements into community. In fact the body in its separate elements is a community. We look in very basic terms at positional relationships in a group. This is like body language but the emphasis is on the space between bodies because this is the social field. At a basic level we are continually making society. All human beings are doing this now. It involves all kinds of relations and internal actions. We have also used exercises that give us contact with our past and the deep past of our ancestors. This is important because movement arises from deep impulses in our species life. On the one hand the work is superficial and light but we are exploring what our bodies can tell us about how we move in the world. This is primordial. How else do we embrace change and transformation but by listening to our bodies – listening with our hearts as well as our ears. I have not mentioned all the practitioners and practices on which this work depends but I know that I depend on them.