The Universal Prayer for Peace film project:

The Universal Prayer for Peace film project was the first film project I engaged in that was totally co-creational. The idea for it came up in a meeting with the beautiful spoken word artist Muneera Pilgrim. This was the original call-out in early summer 2019:

The first round of contributions led to a taster video and the original deadline for the film was extended as it felt like the project was still evolving and unfolding. Everyone involved simply received a copy of ‘The Universal Prayer for Peace’ poem and then responded to that, some read lines, some added lines, some danced, some sung in response. This was the first time that I ever made a video from a collage of contributions, and it was magical to feel how every video clip just found its place in the final video. Completely unrelated film and audio clips ended up just fitting perfectly. It was such a joy to feel how the filming was a transformational gift to everyone involved, of course including me.

The taster video then drew more people into participation. Especially the section that embraces the endless pain of the world needed a very sensitive consideration. Sometimes I was meeting up with people locally to film, at one time only one person showed up, my dear friend Lanni. Because it was just the two of us, we were able to film in a deeply trusting and intimate space which allowed for her very embodied scream of pain to emerge. In hindsight it was perfect. This sort of footage would quite probably not have emerged from a meeting within a larger group.

 The short vidoe below was part of a video collage of contribution for Peace One Day, it became part of the wider call-out: