Shaping Our Future Youth Webinar – All About Healing
“Amazing”, “inspiring” and “powerful” were the words used by participants who attended a recent webinar to celebrate the end of the Shaping our Future Youth Month initiative. Organised by Cape Metro and West Coast Museums together with Africa Unite, the project had asked young people to submit creative works (poems, videos, art, or photography) that reflect on the impact that COVID-19 is having on their communities and to share their visions for a better future (their contributions can be viewed on the Shaping Our Future Facebook page.
The webinar sought to reflect on some of the submissions and to offer young people inspiration and support for the way forward. And what a healing and inspiring webinar it turned out to be thanks to our wonderful guest speakers and our moderators, Bongeka Gumede from Africa Unite and Tazneem Wentzel from Simons Town Museum!
Following a welcome and introduction from Helene Vollgraaff from Cape Town Museum, the first guest speaker, Amy Simons, spoke of her work as an artist and, in particular, her work with young people using art as a means for therapy and healing. Responding to questions from some of the webinar participants, she offers useful advice on staying inspired and creative, highlighting the importance of connecting with other artists and not letting our ever-critical inner voice take over.
She talked about some of the challenges of keeping her work with young people going during lockdown and how important she found this work to be in helping young people to express themselves in these difficult and emotional times. One valuable takeaway message was that everybody can be creative and that one does not necessarily require resources to be creative – art can be made using available materials such as crayons, tea bags, coal from burnt wood, and recycled materials.
The second guest speaker was Earl Mentor, a life coach, author and activist from Ocean View whose powerful story and message touched many of those attending the webinar. With gender-based violence being a dominant theme in many of the creative submissions received, Earl addressed this issue with his talk on “Healing Men and Boys”.
He shares his own story of growing up in a troubled home with an alcoholic mother and drug addict father, living on the streets as a young teenager, and then turning to a life of drugs and gangs for a sense of belonging. From his own experience, he knows that “hurting people, hurt people” and he stresses the importance of men and boys being able to express emotions, come to terms with their past, acknowledge the impact the past has on them, and ultimately choosing to heal in order to break the cycle of violence and trauma. He talks about his own process of transformation and healing, how he reached a point when he refused to carry the burden of his parents and decided to “be more, live more and do more”. His message to young people is that they should “be the change they want to see”, and if they want to see wider change within their community, they should look to expanding their circle of influence and start a movement for change.
Jonty Dreyer from Hout Bay Museum made closing remarks to end the webinar. Inspired by the guest speakers, he emphasised the need for heroes in today’s society, calling on everyone “to take this moment to inspire others and shape the future.”