Euri Bartolome Vidal, Surefoot associate, has spent the past months painting endangered plants and animals in watercolour. Some of the illustrations are printed on organic and fairtrade t-shirts, and donations from sales will go to organisations that protect ecosystems in the Global South. Euri shares the background and inspiration in the creation process. Kindred beings
I wanted to honour the biodiversity we are losing all over the world. I also wanted to make a connection between biodiversity and sustainability and the things we eat, the energy and the things we consume, and how we move around. I have chosen 8 regions and countries and for each of these one "protagonist" species with others around them: - Iberian lynx, Spain - Nama dwarf tortoise, Namibia - Black rhinoceros, Mozambique, Eswatini, and South Africa. - King protea, South Africa - Blue-bearded helmetcrest, Colombia - Chilean chinchilla, Chile - Blue whale (oceans) - Giant redwoods, California. The art of connecting Each watercolour tells a story in itself as it includes cultural elements of the countries the species inhabit. I am originally from Spain, and I have lived or travelled often in the African countries I chose. For the South American countries, I decided to get inspiration in the literature. For the blue-bearded helmetcrest, I chose imagery from the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel G. Márquez. For the chinchilla, I chose novels by Isabel Allende, poetry by Pablo Neruda, and music by guitarist Víctor Jara. For the redwoods I chose cinema as a theme. The first illustration, the lynx, has warm colours in honour of Antoni Gaudi's love for nature and dark blue hues inspired in Picasso's famous war painting "Guernica". The dark blues represent our war against nature, a war that we will never win. The rest of colours represent the protection of biodiversity and the hope of a more sustainable future. To support my future work, I have made organic and fair-trade t-shirts with some of the illustrations. I also want to donate part of the proceedings to organisations in the global South to support ecosystems. The first paintings and t-shirts will be on display in a small exhibit space in Madrid during May-June. If you want to know more about my work and the next species I will be painting, you can follow me on Instagram @ingozini, which sort of means "in danger" in several languages of Southern Africa.
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In February and March, Liz, Tony and Pam delivered Conflict Management and Facilitation Training for Nature Scot. We bid for and won the work in January and pulled in support on Non Violent Communication and Convergent Facilitation to tailor our long-proven facilitation training offering to meet the need. After the first training was delivered to a group in Great Glen House in Inverness, we spent time with the coordinators to refine the offering based on feedback received. The second training at Battleby in Perth saw us move the training to a place where we supported the participants to design and deliver their own practice sessions to further focus their learning experience.
Some feedback from participants: “The final discussions we had really brought it all together for me and made me feel like I did, in actual fact, now have skills and a kind of toolkit for facilitation & managing challenging behaviour.” “I enjoyed the concept of sitting in a circle when working with smaller groups - it's something I would have never thought of doing but it immediately makes participants more at ease when we're all sitting together rather than a "classroom" style approach with the facilitator standing at the front talking down to others.” “The idea of generating a list of group rules or a group agreement is something I will use in future meetings as it provides a reference point to draw people's attention to should the meeting start to go astray.” If you are interested in facilitation training for your group or organisation, please contact us on [email protected]. |
AboutHere’s a collection of some of our articles which have been in our newsletters or published elsewhere.
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