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18 November 2024

Posted by Tabby Hayward

Utopia/Dystopia

This week, we were looking at dream worlds and nightmare worlds - utopia and dystopia.

To begin, we listened to Tony Bennett sing 'If I ruled the world' and came up with our own ideas about the sort of world we would like to create, if we were in charge - with ideas around education, peace and nature.

Next, we looked at the opening of a famous dystopia - Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Inspired by the way Orwell builds this world, showing not telling, but giving us clues as to the way this world operates, and how things are almost like our world but pushed to frightening and unnerving extremes, the group did their own dystopian world building - focusing on what the world might smell, look, sound and feel like, and the day to day life for an ordinary person.

Finally, we returned to utopia, looking at images of futuristic eco homes, incorporating greenery/solar energy/water power/sustainability into the building and lifestyle surrounding the home. Picking one (or elements of several) the writers wrote a morning routine for someone who would live in this home - what would it feel like to live there? What jobs might need doing? How did the character interact with the natural world through their home?

Here is Alisa's gorgeous utopian writing:

I am living on a cloud:

it is very bouncy and spacious.

I touch the Sun,

when it is rising and setting.

It is so luminous

and the light dazzles my eyes.

I enjoy skipping on my cloud,

bouncing on it and mounting it, as if climbing the stairs.

I have a bath made of cloud bubbles often.

And when I sleep at night, I put my head on a cloud pillow and cover myself with a cloud blanket enveloped by the softest and finest cotton like foam.

And my dreams are always guarded by the veil of cloud dreamcatcher.

My favourite part are my neighbours-

large and small:

they sing first thing in the morning

and in the afternoon, they teach me 

how to fly.

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