The World Wide Camp Makers team have been busy in Scotland, Dorset and Chile! But how did it all start?
The owner of a castle in Scotland was organising a festival, but was very concerned that the grounds would be left in a state like this. He would need the castle to be ready to open to visitors at the end of the weekend festival. He needed a team who could set up the camping aspect of the festival so that it could run in a sustainable way.
A team who know just how to set up a good camp have a long history of using tents and know all about how they have developed. We had some out of Mantle training from Mr Kieran on how to pitch a tent. It was great fun and needed good cooperation.
The World Wide Camp Makers packed up their lorries and vans and headed off to Scotland. They had a plan for how they would set out the tents, the VIP area, the dog friendly area and the children’s zone. They had plenty of bins and recycling points and even spent a lot of their time making sure litter wasn’t left around.
There was a LOT of rain over the weekend of the festival and the castle owner would not allow us to drive our lorries onto the grass as it would be churned up and that would not be good for visitors to see. We had to convince him that we had special mats to lay on the grass to drive over and we packed all of our equipment away. The festival was a success!
We were in a real rush to pack all of our equipment away back in the warehouse as the Health and Safety Inspector was due to visit.
She wasn’t happy with a few things - including the wet tents being folded away in their bags without a chance to dry.
We paused the Mantle story so that we could set up a science investigation. We tried to find the best place to dry fabric quickly - the fabric represented the tents. Using a hairdryer was best. Then the fabric dried quite quickly outside - we think that although it wasn’t sunny, the wind must have helped.
We took this knowledge back into the Mantle story and dried the tents before the re inspection.
We also spent some time looking at the climate of the UK - was this rain usual for Scotland and would it be so rainy and cold in Dorset at our next job?
We then received a voice mail from the Location department of the BBC. They were going to be filming in a secret location with top actors and actresses and would need a camp to be set up as there wouldn’t be any accommodation nearby. They were sending us a few photographs of the area and if we were interested we had to contact them.
Well of course we were interested so we rang them to find out more. We would need to set up a camp for around 100 people - actors and crew, for about a month. Yes it would be in a desert, but to find out more we would have to sign a non disclosure agreement.
We used different maps, geographical landscape, countries and climate to work out that we were going to a very dry place. However, we did discover that it isn’t as hot as other deserts we think of and does get cold at nighttime. We would need to be prepared for the climate and so got packing.
After a 14 hour journey, we arrived in Chile, it still had a 1 and 1/2 hour minibus journey deep into the desert.
Fortunately, we had emergency desert survival kits under every seat in the minibus (which we had made earlier out of the Mantle story!)
The driver asked if we could take a detour to the village where his family lived as he was worried about them in the storm. We really wanted to get to the film location, but we did agree.
The villagers were so friendly and allowed us to shelter in their homes with them or in the minibus in a sort of barn like building.
We represented the dust storm using drama - it was really loud and quite frightening! Thank goodness these storms are rare although parts of the Atacama desert can be very windy. Eat the end of the storm everyone was safe but the power lines were down, everything was covered in dust and some damage had been done to vehicles and buildings. Would we stay to help clear up or would we insist we travel on to the film location?
We had a fantastic meeting - led very well by one of our team. We actively listened to each other, made suggestions and came to a decision very professionally.
The meeting led to half of the team helping the villagers and half continuing on to the film location. However, when they arrived they discovered that their equipment was covered in dust and blown around by the storm. So both teams had a big clean up to do!
Will we be ready for when the actors arrive? Nighttime in the Atacama desert is cold so there needs to be good shelter available for everyone…
Well we met the actors and actresses and showed them to their accommodation. Some of it wasn’t quite ready, but the actors took this well and all posted something positive on their social media - they are obviously very aware of their online reputation!
One morning we noticed the sky looked different - could it be a sign of rain? We also noticed other things and we started chatting about it as we went about our work. It could t be rain because we know that it hardly ever rains in the Atacama desert - the clouds are forced up high by the Andes mountains and the rain falls on the other side of them. Then we also noticed one of the villagers coming in to our camp. She seemed very agitated and kept saying some Spanish words over and over again. What was going on?
The villager kept saying Lluvia, mover and Flores. We weren’t sure what she meant. Then she added some actions. We thought it was something like - we need to move the camp because rain is coming and there are flowers under the ground. She left and we thought it was okay to carry on unless we heard anything else…
Well the next morning, there were leaflets everywhere in the camp and it seemed that yes the villagers wanted us to move. They wanted to meet at 2pm. We looked at everyone’s point of view about moving - the villagers, the actors, the BBC and us. Then we all took on a point of view and had a meeting.
At the end of the meeting we showed what the outcome was - to move the camp or to stay where we are.
Some of the BBC thought we should stay as we didn’t know if it would rain - it hadn’t rained for 5 years after all. Most people however thought that the flowers were so important to the villagers that they should move. Everything was packed up just before the rain fell. Would they see the flowers start to grow? Would filming resume?
We represented the rain with a poem, percussion sounds and pairs pushed against each other using there hands to represent the seeds coming out of dormancy.
The BBC decided to put the filming on hold for at least a month, so our team was in limbo. We didn’t know what to do and decided to stay for a few nights in a hotel in the nearby city of Arica.
When we arrived we noticed adverts from Wired Amazon poking for people to help them.
We gave them a call to find out if it was something we could do whilst we were in South America. We knew a little about ornithologist Maria Koepcke and of course we are experienced campers. We also have experience of working with ornithologists. We would want to know more about the climate though.
We paused the story for a short while to explore what kinds of birds live in the Amazon rainforest and to do some art work. We looked at a 3D piece of art by Marcus Coates where birds speak to the people who sit under the heads telling them of challenges they face. We also looked at postcards on the theme of migration made by illustrators during a project at Worcester University.
After using drama to experience listening to Amazonian birds being represented through speech, we were inspired to make our own postcards.
We also worked with ink and clay to explore birds nests.
We met with Wired Amazon and agreed to camp in the rainforest making observations of birds and mammals for them. We were lucky enough to see a jaguar and even a harpy eagle and king vulture.
However, we also saw people with weapons and it looked like they were about to kill an animal.
The next morning, we saw them gathered not far from our camp and they were talking about their families not having food. We followed them and tried to distract them, but they were angry with us for interfering. We couldn’t put ourselves in more danger.
We knew we had to speak to Wired Amazon about this.
Wired Amazon told us that the people we saw live in the rainforest. They believe that some of the animals are a danger to their families and farms and stop them from making money to feed their families. Wired Amazon would like them to work as guides in the forest instead - observing and protecting the animals and then being able to take visitors to where they can definitely see the creatures. This could be their job and then they could have enough money for their families.
These villagers aren’t listening to Wired Amazon though. Could we help them?
We decided to take gifts of what we had in our camp to the villagers - food and medicines. We wrote notes to encourage them to work with Wired Amazon and left these at the edge of the village.
We had to end our story here and decided whether the people in the rainforest would stop being so afraid of the animals and work to protect them instead. Everyone wrote their own ending.
We were sad to leave this Mantle team, but we look forward to our next team and commission!