While at Taraglate, we’d planned to do some drawing with coloured sand. The idea was to do a workshop where kids could draw a contour around their bodies, then fill this in or draw around it. This workshop did not materialise because we ran into some material problems. For one thing, the sand in the Sahara is not the white stuff found on Dutch beaches – which colours beautifully – but a reddish brown sand that makes for muddy colours. Then the festival organisation was so busy with basic stuff like getting electricity everywhere that there was little time to organise a space, water, buckets, kids.

Eveline, who’s second name must be never-say-die, made coloured sand anyway. And coloured bits and pieces, too. Her hands got stained with a rainbow of colours, lovely. We laughed. And learned.

Lesson learned no 1: Sahara sand is different
Lesson learned no 2: Footsteps in the sand are not attractive. Find a firm and flat space to draw – f.ex like the space that the ‘we make carpets’ people had.
Lesson learned no 3: We’d need a lot more containers, water, colourant to do this on a large(r) scale
Lesson learned no 4: When we do this with kids we’d need a number of helpers
Lesson learned no 5: Kids will get very very dirty
Lesson learned no 6: Cross the t’s and dot the i’s with the festival organisation beforehand

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