3.3.1 Factsheet: Project «The Sea is Inspiration»
Duration
One month (august 2010)
Location
Panama City, Florida, U.S.A.
Involved Parties or Persons
Water Planet USA organises dolphin therapy programs as a beneficial experience for children with disabilities. Especially with people with Rett-Syndrom.
Objectives, Aims
The therapy programs use the emotional impact of a dolphin encounter in his own environment combined with expressive art, massage, cranio-sacral therapy and music. The programs aims are to make people fear free in water through lessons in swimming pool. Swimming with dolphines. Integrating the experiences that people had through different formes of art. Teaching peoples about animals in the sea.
Short Description
The sea is inspiration was a training for me. I was crew member on a boat that made it possible for children, who can not communicate in normal way, to swim with dolphines. It was my task to make them feel free in the water and help assistents to understand the sound and body language which the participants used. The body language that was used consisted of pointing laughin cryng, or guiding you where to go by grapping your hand, the children often lives in a world of theyr own. It was an honour to be invited in to it.
To integrate the experience in the water, I was supposed to give the children art lessons. The children could paint. We hold the class outside. This was problematic, for I learned, that autistic children learn best in a classroom. Distraction and impulses like jumping into the pool were less. Being outside, of course children were more interested in swimming with the dolphines and being in the pool. I was their swimming teacher. I learned that its not good for autistic children, to change the role. For them i was the swimming teacher, not the painting teacher. I saw that children were frustated. Because they had to paint along lines of an already existing picture. And they couldnt. So the idea was born to work with abstract painting. I also had not the choice of what to teach them. I received a task.
Setting
I was working with one of my own assistants, an assistant of waterplanet, with a client and with his parents. Their parents were present in the sessions, in order to continue the experience at home. This offered the parents to have quality time with their child. In most cases the parents can not go to holidays with their kids, because of the illness. The swimming sessions happend in water and the drawing sessions happend on land.
I worked two weeks with groups with special needs and two weeks with tourists. In each group were six children from wich 2 with Rett-Syndrom: one with down syndrome and 1 with a light develop mental disorder and 2 with autism, each childs with their parents accompanied by one volunteer from the organization. Rett syndrome is an hillness where the child developes normally until it is 4 years old, when is 4 years he loose the ability to speack, to walk, to eat, and so on. A child with rett syndrome, rarely becmes old than 12 years old. I find it a cruel illness.
Methods
Massages, swimming, and music therapy.
Experience
It was a good experience, people come back the next year and i learned a lot about dolphines behaviours. The climate in panama city could change rappertly the day could start at sunny and hot and in the afternoon could storm and rain therefore a lot of flexebility of the wrkshop leaders was needed, because it happen very often that the progam change, because of the change of the weather . we were at see as often as possible to see the dolphines, because of this change of the weather, it could suddently happen that the wind come up and the waves became very high, pratically in august, when there are tornados as well, in panama city i’ve seen the biggest waves of my life, i’ll never forget it, also i will never forget the smile on the faces of the children, when they see a dolphine fort he first time, ort he faces of a 2 years old when she fort he first time is tasting salt water.
Continuations of the project
Because the hkb didn’t want the project to be eholiday film i decided to combine reabilitation of children, with the reabilitation of dolphines, when they hurt themself. I got in contact with maya kasasic, from Bosnia. Who got injury from a granade and lost her legs. In order to find a solution to re live herself from the orrible pain she met a dolphin named winter who lost her tail in a fishing trap, in order to learn to swim again, they created an artificial tail for her, when maya saw this and saw that the fish was happy and without pain, she decided to connect with the same company, today maya is able to walk and surf without any pain. Human an animals are not as different as we think they are.
The film is showing at the film festival in winthertour in 2010.
See video: 3.3.2 Video
