Transition Culture

Put Your Hands in the Dirt - Kiko Denzer (2004)

Put Your Hands in the Dirt - Kiko Denzer. Self Published (2004)

One of the things people always say when they do a cob building course with us is “why isn’t this stuff taught in schools?� Our children, who after all are the ones who will have to inherit the mess we’ve made of everything, spend most of their time in school learning things that will leave them totally unequipped to face the very real and very testing challenges they will face in a future of energy descent. There are a number of people around taking sustainability into schools, and they often come up against the challenge of how to communicate simpler lifestyles and mindful citizenship to a label-obsessed and disconnected-from-nature youth.

Kiko Denzer, previously author of the excellent ‘Build your Own Earth Oven’ (I read it, I did it, and it worked), has attempted to bridge this divide with mud. A strange choice of medium some might think, but reconnecting young people (literally) with the earth is very powerful, especially when combined with the creative possibilities offered by cob.

This self-published book contains a wealth of ideas for creative arts projects in schools using natural locally available materials, mostly earth. It includes mud wall mosaics, pizza ovens, cob benches, and a variety of cob models and sculptures. I am enchanted by his idea of the mud wall mosaics, a sticky cob mix is hurled against a wall (find me a child who won’t enjoy doing THAT!), trowelled smooth, a design is scratched into it and it is then painted with natural pigments (as in the African tradition). The results are stunning, transforming hostile barren school walls into somewhere you might actually want to spend time.

He has also made a beautiful sundial and a labyrinth, again from local and natural materials. Kiko notes that for him the objects that are produced are not the most important thing, that the real art is in the projects themselves, the mess, the craic, the learning, the whole glorious muddy journey. This resonates with my experience, that working with cob in any context, be it making a wall mosaic, a bread oven or a whole house, draws out an instinctive creative urge in most people, as well as many questions about shelter making, and a deeper dissatisfaction with how things are being done at present.

One of my favourite things in this book is a picture on the last page which is only accompanied by a small amount of text, but which shows an example of what he calls ‘intersection repair’, where a street corner has been transformed, with cob benches and sculptures, built up against the side of an existing rather bland building. It is beautiful, and turns somewhere you would walk past without a second thought into somewhere you might stop and sit and strike up a conversation. It shows that perhaps we don’t need to rebuild some of the more ugly modern buildings we have to live alongside in urban areas: perhaps we can give them a cob facelift! This is a very good example of the permaculture principle of ‘minimum input maximum output’.

Cob is a remarkable material, and ‘Put Your Hands in the Dirt’ is a very useful resource of ideas and possibilities to help anyone wanting to introduce it to the next generation. I recommend it wholeheartedly.