For the longest time, Canterbury was known as Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury’s tale’ but on 4th of March, Wednesday was my first time going to Canterbury-not to mention I started the day very early 5:00 am which is rare.

We were invited to assist the workshop at Christ Church University in Kent. Two secondary schools (Canterbury Academy and Sandwich Technology School) participated and were divided into poetry and art ran by two practitioners Sara and Azan.

We arrived at CCC university at 9 am, meeting the university ambassadors, staff and the practitioners alike then we helped setting up.

By 9:30 one of the school group came and waited around as the other group was late as they ended up arriving at exactly when the session started.

It all started with an introduction to CCC plus the house keeping rule and brief introduction to NSI and the competition, ‘In someone else’s shoes’. But the most key speech was by Khojesta who is an Afghan intellect and human activist talking about her experience of repression in Afghanistan on education (particularly on young women) due to the Taliban’s takeover. After 10 minutes worth of comfort break, the schools were split. Canterbury School was poetry and Sandwich was art. Like the schools did, staffs were divided to support the workshop thus myself and Ama were also joined different workshops-I was art, and Ama the poetry.

The workshop, there was short introduction by Sara – the art practitioner- and the children were asked to create and street art style artwork of a shoe responding to Khojesta’s talk or encouraged to think in other’s perspective.

What I did was mostly tidying and just basically helping when it’s needed. However, both of us had the biggest challenge to face; to interact with the children. Because of our timidity at Manchester, my superiors specifically called us to step up especially we’ll be leading the workshops and private view ourselves.

Of course, I knew that it was required for me to do and I was preparing myself for it. But because of my overthinking and social awkwardness it was hard for me to be proactive. To confess the truth, I fear if I’d interrupt them when they’re creating as when I was in their shoes, I hated when someone came up and bother me with questions (I used to cut off the conversation and go back to my working zone but after this experience I regretted my past actions haha). So most of the time, I was wandering around to get a chance to talk to them.

But of course, I managed to have a word with every table and they were nice than I expected. What I found surprising was how engaged they were, there were many questions during the speech and throughout the workshop. Although some were artist block on what their subject should be, but at the end they created amazing works.

What I interested in was some of their decision to make it to a storytelling, or create a fictional character and imagine their state. It made me think about my recent reflection on purpose in art how any of form art guide one to experience the life of other in different environment thus expand one’s expand their view of the world moreover, become empathetic. But this is slightly out of topic, I digress.

At the end all schools unite and volunteers present their work and read poetry, which by quarter to three, it all ended.

From the most thought that struck was really about myself. I came to think about my anxiety in small talks and I left with greatest fear I looked upon as creepy/awkward adult or even worse I was beginning to think about everything I’ve said and judging them. This has been my life time struggle, and this has got me fallen to the rabbit hole of self doubt which will be a long term project to work on.

Even after finishing the workshop, we had about an hour for the train to come, so we had a very short tour around Kent, and saw the Cathedral accompanied with the ambassadors from the CCC who we met by accident.