Things fall apart.

It feels like things are falling apart.  The world will never be the same.  We have been awakening belatedly to the sobering reality of climate change only to be battered by the devastating and deadly pandemic of the coronavirus. Our young people look to their futures and, with good reason, are worried and anxious.  They ask themselves, ‘Is this the world I want to live in?’ and ‘What can I do?’

Imagine

One thing they can do is to connect, reach out to each other around the world across boundaries and barriers of culture, geography and politics to listen, share their stories, experiences and learn from each other.  They can use the universal language of the creative arts to break the bubble of isolation, weave Indra’s Net around the earth to explore ideas, rehearse strategies, imagine alternatives and help sow the seeds for a more caring, justice seeking and creative world.  They can paint their vision, dance it, dramatise it, paint it, write it, film it, shout it from the rooftops in whatever form is appropriate.

Connect

Young people can then use the remarkable developments in digital technology as tools and platforms such as Zoom, Facebook etc to help connect with each other, share stories, create conversations and dialogue across borders and boundaries to help them achieve their aims.

Support

Inspired by the extraordinary metaphor of Indra’s Net, The Indra Congress provides a supportive, connecting framework and network within which this can happen. The mission of the Indra Congress is to make creative art forms available to young people to help them navigate their way through fractured communities, challenging situations and settings, to promote empathy and to connect young people to their peers elsewhere in the world.

Indra is currently a small, informal network of young people, artists, educators and others around the world who share this vision.   We have partners in the UK and Northern Ireland, South Africa, Palestine, India, West Africa, Greece, Tunisia, Brazil  and elsewhere.  In the face of the huge challenges facing us globally it is time to be ambitious, expand the net and make wider and more diverse connections.

David