On 18th June six intrepid adventurers stepped out onto a beach near Kidwelly in West Wales (UK) to take part in the Global Earth Exchange. There were supposed to be many more, however come the day what with illness, medical appointments and life generally only six made it, however what we lacked in numbers was made up for in spirit! We chose this beach as it was particularly important to 2 in our group, and the sea generally being close to all our hearts. So we chose it to represent the seas of the world and although a beautiful beach, it too suffers from pollution and litter as well as being the site of a Tsunami in the 1600s and a place of wreckers in the past, resulting in several shipwrecks. So a place of human tragedy as well as a place of wounding more recently with litter, pollution and oil spillages in recent years. We came and shared our own stories of wounded places important to us, including the rainforests of Malaysia now gone due to palm oil, the valleys of Wales decimated by mining for copper and coal, and local villages in our rural areas where due to inconsiderate building the natural waterways are now no longer flowing correctly resulting in local flooding.

We first sat and shared our stories, then with a poem and a prayer we set off to find what was around to create our RadJoy bird. We all had a great time gathering and then co-creating together, by the end, as you can see, a beautiful bird came to life. We then infused our RadJoy bird with our heartfelt songs, poems, prayers and drumming leaving it to continue sending out the joy we found into the world. It was such a heartwarming co-creative adventure that some of us plan to keep doing these radical acts of joy elsewhere , collecting the majority of the rubbish we find and leaving a creative form with a message of joy, to inspire others to do the same…