Co-creating at the threshold : a dialogical approach to festival planning at a Cape Town Waldorf school

Waldorf schools were first established in Germany in 1919 under the guidance of Rudolf Steiner, with the intention of educating children for the renewal of society. Since the spread of Waldorf schools to South Africa in the 1950's, South African Waldorf teachers have been faced with the challenge of localizing the pedagogy to meet the needs of modern South African children. One arena for this challenge is in planning the school festivals. Through data derived from ethnographic observation of festival planning and enactment at Michael Oak Waldorf School in Cape Town, South Africa, I show that Michael Oak teachers consider the celebration of school festivals to be intrinsic to the education of the children, and that in adapting the festivals to their own context they are confronted with conflicting opinions and ideas about how to juxtapose the Christian and seasonal festivals, how to negotiate religious differences, and to what extent to adapt the festivals to reflect specific aspects of South African culture. Using data obtained from participant observation, predominantly semi-structured, unstructured, and informal interviews with more than seventy people (including Michael Oak teachers, former pupils, and past and present parents), along with background reading and study, I show how the these teachers, recreating each festival anew every year instead of relying solely on established traditions, took a dialogical approach to conceptualizing and planning their festivals - one that, though time-consuming and sometimes complicated, was itself a ritual meaningful to the teachers. This dialogical approach was outwardly manifest in the festival's ritual symbols, particularly the use of time and space, and the objects and performance filling them. It was also observed in the planning meetings and was described by the Michael Oak teachers in interviews. Through this dialogical approach, the teachers experienced what Victor Turner calls communitas, a liminal, threshold state of creativity, changed relationships, and potentiality. I demonstrate through teachers' statements that by remaining on the threshold of these often conflicting ideas, the teachers found in themselves a creative energy that extended to the children as the teachers included them in festival preparation and enactment.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Social Anthropology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Majoros, Elizabeth M

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Spiegel, Andrew

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8942

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/8942