This has been an exciting week for the organisers and participants of the Culture Step programme! I am in an interesting position, because I am helping to organise and arrange things but also getting to participate. If you're also a participant and reading this blog, I'd love to know some of your thoughts about your experience in the comments. This week we have had two events so far, and we'll have two more by the end of the week. First, we took a trip to the four ancient towers that form part of Kiek in de Kök Fortifications Museum. We met at Neitsitorn Tower (which dates back to 1370) and took a walk through the four towers that make up the museum. Kiek in de Kök is apparently the largest medieval tower in the Baltic countries. There are all sorts of ghost stories surrounding the fortifications, which reminded me of my hometown Norwich, which is also a medieval city like Tallinn, with plenty of spooky stories. Our guide, Kadi, had done some academic research into this subject, and she suggested that wherever you go in the world, people tell ghost stories! This certainly fits with my experiences of other cultures and I was reminded of a taxi driver in Singapore who spent twenty minutes warning me about the women with no legs he saw gliding around the modern city at night. When we are newcomers to a culture, it's comforting to see some familiarities (even spooky ones). Does this match with your own culture or cross-cultural encounters? Last night we had our official Culture Step launch party. We tried some traditional Estonian snacks and watched a new nature documentary called The Wind Sculpted Land. The movie has just won 'best cinematography' at Matsalu international film festival and shows the changing seasons across Estonia, documenting how this affects the wildlife's behaviour. I can see why it deserved the award, because each shot is a beautiful view of nature, some from traditional angles we are used to seeing, others providing a fresh perspective that frame the natural world like a beautiful painting. Some of the animals are familiar to me, we have foxes (rebane) and otters (sa oled) in England. But we do not have wolves (hunt), or moose (libu). Many Estonian people that I meet seem to have a deep connection with nature, with wild swimming and mushrooming trips to the forest a regular weekend activity for many. On my Estonian language apps, I was taught phrases like 'I'm going hiking in Lahemaa with my family' - 'Lähen perega Lahemaale matkama' and the word for mushrooming (seenele) very early on! Watching this film made me think about how nature can influence culture and the two can become entangled with one another. The land that we are brought up in can greatly impact the way that we view the world. Having a connection with nature changes the way that we go about our daily lives. Likewise, we impact nature, by filming it, taking walks within it, consuming (even man made things). The changing seasons here also have a big impact on how people act. Having lived in cities that do not have four seasons (Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Singapore), I can say that although winter can be sad, it means that we appreciate the warm weather of summer much more! People in those countries had not based their cultural events so much around the changing seasons, although in the case of Vietnam, and some Chinese Singaporeans, they focussed on the moon instead. Cyclical change that can be represented by the seasons or the moon is a big part of our lives, that sometimes we're more conscious of than others. Time is passing, but with the seasons it is moving in a circle, rather than a straight line. It's sad that summer is ending, but it has to if we are going to see the beautiful colours of autumn again. Actually we saw in the film that Estonia even has a fifth season, a natural flood that comes between winter and spring. We often perceive floods to be a disaster, but here it is a crucial part of the natural cycle. You can watch the trailer here. Finally, I want to think about how watching a nature documentary relates to adult education. Sitting down to watch a documentary (or any movie for that matter) is an example of informal learning that we are doing all the time. I learned a lot from this film, not only about Estonian wildlife, but also Estonian perspectives on nature. The Culture Step programme is providing different kinds of learning opportunities for participants than they may usually find in the formal space of a classroom, or in their workplace. The process of learning about Estonian culture is also opening up questions for me about my own culture, and what I might want to share with migrants about British culture (I don't want to get into that now though because I think it's a very different situation!). I hope to find out more about the cultures of the other participants too, perhaps bringing this multi-cultural dimension can be one of the ways I can help add further to the project as part of my placement.
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LaurenI am an IMAESC student, English teacher and adult education researcher from the UK. Categories
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