Hello from us all at Last Chance to Paint and we hope you have had a wonderful summer break.
We have been very busy getting ready for chapter 2 of the project Innova Art ‘Person of the Forest’ which will be ‘live’ from Borneo from September 6th to the 17th and we are super excited about the fact we now have over 180 schools ‘travelling’ with us! We would love to know how many children your school is involving and if you can please complete our brief survey which will really help us to get things right for you all and if you can spread the word to other schools!
We also want to encourage you all to send in the art your children have done for our ‘Spirit of the Rainforest’ chapter from the Yawanawá tribe in the Amazon rainforest. We have just announced Awards so we can recognise individual pieces of art the children send in and if you would like your children to be eligible for these awards please get their art submitted for the first two chapters by 22nd November at the latest. More news on that soon.
Many of you have made contact with us and are concerned about the welfare of the Yawanawá tribe in the Amazon rainforest as fire and destruction take hold. We are delighted to report the tribe hasn’t yet been affected.
We are well at Mutum. The fire is very far from us thank God! We the Yawanawá are “safe”
The devastation in the Amazon and the messages we have received has confirmed the power of connecting people to environmental subjects personally and getting to know individuals, such as Nixiwaka Yawanawá through the Last Chance to Paint project.
These two messages we received sum it up well:
The entire situation is a worldwide disaster, but somehow the fate of one individual can bring it down to a personal level
Reading so much about the devastation in the Amazon over the past couple of days. I know they aren’t always in contact, but have you heard from or about the Yawanawá tribe at all? Are they safe?
We hope we never have to report a disaster but we believe, even stronger now, that the children who you engage in our project will feel personally connected and will make powerful and positive individual decisions that will make a difference to the future of our planet, peoples, plants, environments and animals.
So please join us in Borneo with the Penan tribe and Orangutans, we will have all our tech with us to receive your questions via Iridium satellites and will be blogging every day and answering the children’s questions. We will be posting a daily video too for you to watch in your schools.
Please do get the children painting and drawing as the reflective space created whilst making a piece of art is the moment children will bond to the subject, learn & care. We really can make a difference and our World Gallery will highlight what the children stand to lose and remind them and us that as individuals we do have some power to make a positive change.
John Dyer.