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'Person of the Forest'
With the Penan Tribe & Orangutans of Borneo
The Borneo Rainforest is vital to us all
Children and young artists aged 25 and under are invited to ‘travel’ with the Last Chance to Paint team deep into the Borneo Rainforest to meet the Penan tribe and orangutans. Paint alongside artist John Dyer and exhibit on the World Gallery to highlight what we stand to lose. Discover the music & culture of the rainforest, meet baby orangutans and investigate rainforest science with our superb free teaching resources. An extraordinary, interactive project to inspire and connect children and young artists to our natural world.
"The hunter-gatherer Penan in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, are battling to stop the destruction of their last remaining forests, and their way of life. Their forests are being cleared for logging, oil palm plantations and hydroelectric dams, robbing them of their means of survival."
Survival International
Photo of Nyapun (third from left) and his two wives, his eldest son and son in law with Robin Hanbury-Tenison OBE. 2019
Explore Borneo through art
TEACHING RESOURCES
Our downloadable resources are primarily designed for Key Stage 2 but are easily adaptable for all Key Stages with links to Art and Design, Geography, Science, English, SMSC and Citizenship curricula. Parents, home educators and young artists can use them too.
Five lessons and full teacher notes
Why?
Deforestation for palm oil and logging is causing huge damage to the rainforests of Borneo. We travelled to meet the Penan tribe in Sarawak and explored their culture, knowledge and music. The Penan children joined in with 'Last Chance to Paint' by painting and drawing their rainforest and tribal village.
Palm oil is a super-efficient crop, meaning that we can produce ten times more oil on the same area of land compared to other oil crops like soybean oil or coconut oil. It is also less dependant on pesticides and fertilisers and is produced from African oil palms. The bad news is that these plantations are creating a huge loss of rainforest, over 80% in Borneo and adding many animals, including the orangutan, to the critically endangered list.
Where?
The Penan live in Mulu, Sarawak and are one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes although the majority of the tribe now lives in settlements. Mulu is a world heritage area. We painted with the Penan tribe and in the rainforest from September 6th to September 10th 2019 before heading to the far south of Borneo to Central Kalimantan and with the help of the Orangutan Foundation and permission of the Indonesian Government we were allowed to travel deep into the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve to meet and paint wild and orphaned orangutans.
What do we want you to do?
We want you to use the art of John Dyer, combined with our video diary, photographs, music we recorded and blogs to immerse young artists in the subject of the Borneo rainforest. Encourage them to reflect, connect and to then create their own piece of rainforest inspired art based on plants, the Penan tribe or orangutans and to upload it to our World Gallery. Help us to make real connections between peoples and to build a shared gallery celebrating the natural world. View the ‘Person of the Forest’ gallery now and get ready to submit your young artists’ work for review.
Meet the Penan tribe
Nyapun's home in the rainforest in the 1970s
Nyapun is one of the oldest of the Penan people, being well over 80 years old and is a close personal friend of Robin Hanbury-Tenison, who took this beautiful photograph in the 1970s when they first met during a Royal Geographical Society Expedition to Borneo. Life has changed monumentally in Mulu, Borneo and for Nyapun and his family over the last 50 years with well over 90% of the rainforest having been cut down since then. Our 'Person of the Forest' chapter of Last Chance to Paint is a last chance for us all to meet Nyapun and to see how the tribe live today. Some Penan groups still try to follow a hunter gathering life in the rainforest, but the vast majority, including the Penan at Mulu and Nyapun's family have been forcibly settled by the government and issued with id cards even though many have no known date of birth and they just pick a number as they don't know their age. There is so much we must learn from the past so we can improve the future and the Penan provide a unique insight into a people who have lived through extreme change and who were once self sufficient for food, health, shelter, culture and tools from the rainforest.
Photograph © Robin Hanbury-Tenison
Nyapun and his family photographed in the 1970s when they still lived a hunter gathering nomadic life
Nyapun can be seen on the far left of this photograph and his wife to his right can also be seen playing the nose flute in the video below in 2019. Their lives have changed so much as the rainforest has been cleared for logging and palm oil and they are now forced to live in a small village located between the remaining rainforest and the airport. Beyond the airport and all the way to Brunei there is now no rainforest left.
Photograph © Robin Hanbury-Tenison
What are the outcomes?
By spending time painting and drawing the Penan tribe and orangutans, children and young artists will connect, ask questions, value and learn a great deal about the Borneo rainforest in a natural and personal way. Our 'Person of the Forest' adventure provides young artists with a unique insight into life in the Borneo rainforest.
The project naturally brings up the complex issues surrounding agriculture, population, commercial use of vegetable oils, deforestation for logging and palm oil and how we need to urgently find a balance in the future so that ecosystems and man can co-exist sustainably. We hope you will use our resources as inspiration for a wider conversation with young artists on these issues.
Children’s and young artists’ work on the World Gallery
Let your children and young artists give nature a voice through original artwork inspired by this expedition. The World Gallery celebrates children’s creativity alongside work by young artists aged 25 and under, with age groups from our youngest painters to the 17–25 category for older students, recent graduates and independent young artists. Explore their work below and look out for Young Earth Artist of the Year, our forthcoming celebration of art and the natural world.