With shadows, what connections might be forged beyond here and now?
Shared by TONYA ROONEY
With shadows, what connections might be forged beyond here and now? A child laughs as she runs, watching a shadow follow her along. It is hard to escape a shadow sometimes. At other times a child sees her shadow disappear without warning. Lost, never to appear in the same form again. Children seem to recognise shadows as a phenomenon that is both in and out of their control, enjoying a playful exchange with shifts in light, position, time, place and moving bodies. These small everyday moments become mingled with wider planetary movements of sun and earth.
With shadows, perhaps children also sense the fleetingness of their own presence, and in some small way seek out new connections across deeper past, present and future times and places. Watching the children, I wonder what stories the shadows might tell if we attended more to their shifting intensities. How, for example, might we come to see differently the collective entanglements in a world that is warming?
References
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. and Kummen, K. (2016) Shifting Temporal Frames in Children’s Common Worlds in the Anthropcene. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 17(4): 431–441. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949116677930
Rooney, T. (2019) Weathering time: walking with young children in a changing climate, Children’s Geographies, 17(2), 177-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2018.1474172
Rooney, T., Blaise, M & Royds, (2018-2019) Weathering Collaboratory [blog] https://weathercollaboratory.blog/