"A Magical Journey": the AFL Experience 

11 April 2019

As a whole, the AFL experience was eye-opening and really useful in a practical sense. On the first day, I walked in like I usually do, with a cocky and dangerously self-centred swagger, because I kept telling myself, “I’m here to do bits”, but when I sat down and listened to the initial conversations of people, my self-confidence began to waver, and soon enough, I was quieter than a congregation listening to a sermon on a Sunday afternoon.

After the initial inductions, we began our first practical session on Monday, where we went to the Tate and met a bubbly and wonderful lady called Jodi and her colleague, who were from the Tate Exchange and Graeae production company respectively. They shared their respective experiences of working with SEND children and young people, and it was really interesting and amazing just how talented these people are.

About a week after, roughly, we were placed into groups, received our live briefs and began to work on them. It was really something, watching the individual people that you are working with, thinking you’ve seen it all, but then, they develop a skill that has always been familiar to them, but to you, it’s stupefying. I guess it could be related to when Goku mastered Ultra Instinct in Dragon Ball Super, an ability of the gods that no mortal could ever hope to achieve, but only the people closest to him could see that he had that potential. For example, when I first saw Mohammed’s paintings and artwork, it literally took me by surprise and I was shocked by the detail of it. When I saw Radhika’s video, I appreciated and held in high esteem her skill to video edit, since it is a skill that I have somewhat coveted for quite a while now. With Sinead, I had come across quite a few talented graphic designers before, however, none quite has the efficiency and work rate that this woman possesses. And finally, with Ike, the unknown enigma of the group, it was a case of him hating the fact that he would have to socialise and soon enough, he completely erased that fear, transforming himself into the charismatic devil that would lure many people towards events that took place during the Tate Exchange festival.

There was no one thing in particular I enjoyed - to pick out a singular thing, amongst everything that I took part in would be an insult to everything. Although, if there was something that I enjoyed, I would have to say the Tate Late event that we created, simply for the fact that I saw everyone’s hard work pay off at the end. If anything, I enjoyed the fact that I chose to embark upon this magical journey that allowed me to meet people who have enlightened me and have indirectly left a mark on my thinking process and instead of me having a single-minded tunnel vision approach on my ambition and nothing else, I now tend to think more about the world and concepts that affect everyone in some aspect.

I would rate this experience in a different metric. In the same way that Kagami realized he was never going to beat the Generation of Miracles if he kept playing as a one-man team in Kuroko no Basket and subsequently became stronger as a result, the same way my mindset has somewhat evolved and I am less ignorant than I was before, although I do tend to stray towards the childish, immature and stupid every now and often!

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, and in the words of 50 Cent, “Hate it or love it, the underdog’s on top, and I’m gon' shine, homie, until my heart stop. Go ‘head envy me, I’m rap’s MVP and I ain’t going nowhere so you can get to know me”.

Photography by Eric Aydin-Barberini