First of all, apologies for such a long silence on our website and facebook pages. We have been taking time to consider the impact of the global pandemic on our project in Spiti – due to take place for the month of July this year – and also our fundraising plans.
Spiti 2021…Is now going to be Spiti 2022.
The whole project will be bumped forward 1 year.
We are sad to postpone, sad because of the huge toll the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on all of our lives and societies, in so many ways.
Spitian people have made huge sacrifices this past year to keep their society safe. They chose to close their valley to outsiders back in early March 2020, before either the UK or Indian lockdowns began. They set up isolation hotels for the truckers bringing food over the mountain passes, the 1500 farmers in Spiti changed their agricultural system to grow traditional crops, they turned away all tourism – for many, their primary income. The traditional structures of Spitian society – especially local decision-making which took the opinions of men, women, elders and youth into account – gave them a firm foundation to make such fundamental changes to the way they lived. You can read more in these articles: Community response keeps Spiti resilient
As I write, Spiti remains closed.
With extremely limited medical facilities, its landscape of isolated villages with intergenerational households as the norm, and reliance on being able to work together to survive in such a harsh landscape, people here are still so very vulnerable to Covid. It seems very unlikely indeed that everyone in Spiti would have been vaccinated by summer, or the Yak Pack team either. We feel the risk of bringing infection into Spiti is just too high and deeply irresponsible when they have done so much to keep safe – that’s if we would even be allowed to travel in the first place!
The project will now take place in July 2022, and we’ll be making good use of the extra year - watch this space for details!
We are looking for local schools who would like to be involved in the Project.
From Autumn 2021, we can come in for assemblies about Spiti (KS1 Geography topic), story-telling days, and lots more. It’s a brilliant way for children to learn more about kids their age living a very different life. In return perhaps you could have a mufti day or a cake sale to help us raise funds. Drop us a line if you’re interested. yakpack@treehousetheatre.com
Fund raising News
Thanks to everyone who has supported us this year. To date we have raised over £2000 – more than a third of the total amount – incredible really considering the circumstances. A heartfelt thanks to all of you.
We started 2020 with a Story telling event at Avon Heath Country Park – performing the story that we’re taking to Spiti “Rubbish Heap Rising”. It’s a lovely story to share, so interactive, and we’re looking forward to its evolution into a play this coming year.
We held a lockdown Quiz Night in May – lots of fun battling to win a Patty Pan squash plant!
After a few date changes, we managed to hold The Big Swish in September, which was enormous fun swapping clothes and raised £300 too!
In October Arjuna and Steff cycled from John O’Groats to Lands End, wild camping en route, battling the elements, and ultimately raising a huge amount and basically saving our fund-raising this year.
Looking ahead
As you can imagine, most of our planned fund raising this year involved people getting together – for clothes swaps, carol singing, music afternoons, dance nights, story-telling, performances at festivals……the list goes on! All of it clearly up in the air and very uncertain!
Going into 2021, the only fixed plan is The Big Swish, currently planned for February. We will of course be postponing that, probably until July. Join the facebook event for updates:
We will aim to transfer all our planned events from 2020 to the summer/autumn of 2021, but as with so much, we’ll have to see how things pan out. We’ll plan for the best and keep our fingers crossed, whilst remaining flexible and adaptable.
During the months ahead we’ll be recording another story for ‘Lets Open a Book’, who are making audio stories available to kids in Spiti where schools remain closed.
With the development of ‘Rubbish Heap Rising into play form during this year, will come its evolution into a book version too, beautifully illustrated by Ilse Black who will leave space in its pages for your own creativity to flourish.