Sunday 21 December 2008

What is a utopia? aren't there many problems with it? I think I have a problem with something being a utopia, perhaps I find the idea of something being perfect slightly uncomfortable, slightly creepy even. I believe you could, say in relation to creating multi-sensory environments, that you are trying to create a utopia for very young children, or children with complex disabilities, but how can you avoid the fact that one or more child might not like balloons, or any kind of sound? Thus how do you create a utopia because everyone has very different ideas of what their utopia is, therefore can such a thing exist? Could perhaps utopia be something that isn't perfect? Something that doesn't work quite the way it's supposed to, but personally to you, its utopia? So how do you go about creating a utopia for a community? What can you do to make something perfect for a large group of people? In some ways I don't think it possible, if I were to go into a community and give them something and expect them to have no problems with it I think I would be somewhat naieve, however perhaps if I were to consult the people I was working with and taking into account the ideas and skill of other people, then perhaps a utopia would be possible.

2 comments:

Rosie said...

I think your right, you can't make a common utopia, but you can make life a bit more 'utopitian' if you compromise and negotiate everyones common beliefs/ideas. I think that doing a project with 'mainstream' children and 'disabled' children could show them and us that you can have a world where everyone can be happy....that is my utopia : )

Carolina Castro-Freire said...

I don't believe utopia could ever be perfect, or rather, having bad things happening is always part of the perfect. If we think about children's stories, when something bad happens, that is when the adventure starts. It's exciting!!