Workshop at Shan State Kachin Baptist Association

Dérive was pleased to travel to Lashio, a city in Shan State, Myanmar with Welsh artist Sarah Jane Paynter and her project INK to work with locally based civic organizations. Their first stop was at Shan State Kachin Baptist Association, a church and informal school board of teachers that works within the Kachin community in Shan State.

Despite the Myanmar government’s designation of “regions” — administrative units in which the ethnic Bamar are considered to have their native lands — and “states” — administrative units designated based on a particular area’s ethnic majority — a significant proportion of Kachin find themselves outside of Kachin State. This leads to disenfranchisement of the Kachin within Shan State and Lashio in particular, and the community must rely on their own means of resources and organization.

The one-day workshop featured presentations by both myself and Paynter, arts activities that could be used in classrooms, and demonstrations of both Dérive: Terra Form and INK.

Dérive would like to thank Moses, the Education Administrator of Church Based Education at SSKBA, for his faith in our projects, willingness to participate, ability to organize the workshop, and his deft Kachin to English translation skills.