TEXT FOR DONNA & TIM So, 222 miles in 21 days, from London to Dartington. The mirror image in reverse of a walk Donna first made in 2001 as part of a remarkable 3rd year project. En route this time, Donna and Tim have been joined by a number others, to accompany them on sections of the walk and to share conversation: thoughts about Dartington, memories, associations, anecdotes, perceptions of its pasts and possible futures. These co-walkers have included former and current staff and students, as well as others with a close association with the college. And now many of you here on this last leg from Totnes …
In some ways, the closing of a loop, an ending of a cycle. A slow embodied and mindful return for Donna to a very different Dartington, itself, as we all know, about to migrate in some unknowable form or other a little further south-west. And an almost-ending of Tim’s MA. A gathering before a dispersal. A farewell. But the walk itself has also been – and remains - an invitation to new meetings, exchanges, reflections into the future about location, context, community, change as the only real constant, about ‘home’, displacement, new beginnings, and at its heart, focused questions about what is important. Perhaps above all it invites us to inhabit something of the paradox of change: hold on tightly, let go lightly.
My old friend Ric Allsopp, who I've known for about 25 years - he was one of the core reasons for my own return to Dartington from Australia in the late 1990s – was one of those invited to walk who couldn’t take part; he was working elsewhere throughout this period. Ric emailed me a copy of his response to their invitation:
… I had hoped to be able to join you to walk and talk - but I'm afraid the dates just don't work out for me. So - best of luck with the project. I'm not sure if I actually have anything to say about Dartington - a thirty year involvement in the College leaves me with the feeling that it is time to walk on. 'Dartington' will remain as it always was - an unstable set of ideas and acts of public dreaming; an opportunity to engage with some extraordinary people who more than occasionally managed to share a radical educational and arts ethos and way of doing things which gave rise to challenging, absorbing and uplifting work - work that will continue to define and disturb and resonate with contemporary arts practice. Best wishes, Ric
When Goat Island were here a year or so ago, as part of their last tour of their last piece The Lastmaker, they talked with us about endings and about how one might go about managing one’s endings. The Goats said: “As a company, we came to the conclusion that it was time to come to a conclusion … We needed to take control of our ending before our ending took control of us. We considered the possible endings we did not want to define us, endings of burnout, internal conflict, self-repetition, or diminished quality. We wanted to reject these, and to reject the notion of their inevitability. Thus we decided to approach our ending as we have tried to approach all our changes: creatively”. At that time we felt we had no ownership of our ending here, it didn’t belong to us and it was both disorienting and painful. After a while we started to look for ways to approach this ending creatively. Donna and Tim’s walk is a brilliant example of one such creative approach, and as an event it resonates strongly with Dartington’s longstanding engagement in acts of walking as a reflective, creative and performative practice.
Earlier this week, I joined Tim & Donna for one leg of the walk, 11.5 miles, much of it on the coastal path, from Sidmouth to Starcross. Many things came up for me on this day of walking and talking in the sunshine. In particular, a focused sense of those colleagues and students who have been closest to what’s really important about Dartington for me: as possibility, as open invitation, as human encounter, as continuous and sometimes precarious unfolding. Some of them are here today. Some aren’t, but in other ways of course they always are. And then some perceptions about what I have valued most and still do: perhaps in particular, the ways in which sometimes here teaching has become so much more than some dumb claim to possession of knowledge to be conveyed – at those times it has been about not knowing, about experiencing, being present and attentive and open to the extraordinary creative possibilities of other human beings. In the best of times I have been utterly inspired by the engagement of some students, completely blown away by the quality of their work, unsettled, knocked over, rearranged, lifted up. It has changed me. What could be better than a teacher wide-eyed and joyous at something really taking place, and at the knowledge that he knows bugger all, and is only just beginning …?
So, I want to thank you, my teachers, my friends – Donna and Tim, Augusto, Pete ... You are beautiful. You practice hope, it’s a thing you do with imagination, attention, and grace. And as Patti Smith once wrote, the air – this air - is filled with the moves of you. Our conversations will go on and on, I know.
In a moment I will invite you all to share a cup of tea and a home-baked Persighetti scone, and to talk, with Donna and Tim and each other. But before that, some final words from the Goats, on the work of ending:
“There is much to do: the work of ending. At the moment we find it difficult to imagine work more rewarding than that. Isn’t it, after all, the work of our lives? ... We will try to live up to the words we have spoken to you today: to keep our promises, to be the people we said we were, to stage what we know in the stillest hour of the night to be true, to remind ourselves of the impossible, the historical, to choreograph a dance to repair the world, to say, “We have become human again””.
5.15 p.m., Thursday 25 September 2008, Dartington
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