Fire, and why we use it

Many of the learning experiences we create at Eden Project - for school children all the way through to captains of industry - revolve around the natural world and our relationship with it.

Central to this exploration is our use of, and connection with, the four elements of old: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. In this series of short articles I'll talk about why they're important and how we use them. I'll start with fire...

Sit any group of people around a fire and within minutes they will all be transfixed. The chattering dies down, they 'zone out', and they appear to be transported to a different place. Or perhaps more properly, they're transported to a different time. Fire was one of humanity's earliest and most important innovations and drivers of cultural change - there's widespread evidence of controlled fire use from 150,000 years ago and the roots probably go much deeper than that.

You don't need me to tell you what a game-changing innovation fire was. It gave our ancestors the ability to cook food, allowing them to eat a more diverse, tastier diet (there were probably also some H&S benefits too!); it kept them warm, allowing them to move to, and thrive in, new landscapes; and it provided massive social benefits, too. Groups of humans now had a central hearth, a point of commune, which they could gather round, seek protection in, and share stories in.

It's mainly this last point that's so important to our work. Eden's learning programmes are rich in narrative so a powerful story-telling space at the heart of our temporary communities is an absolute must. Sharing stories around a fire surely counts as one of humanity's oldest past-times and in our work it connects people very readily, and often without explanation, to a long history of people doing the same. This connection to ancestry and lineage can provide people with a deeper context for the work and create more memorable and transformative learning experiences.

We also use fire in a ritual context and sometimes offer simple fire *ceremonies in our work. Many of our programmes, particularly a long residential experience like HotHouse, involve moving between different ideas, practices, and places. This means the narrative progresses by flowing through transitional moments, objects, and geographies. We've learnt it can be very powerful to the learning journey to mark these shifts, which can be thought of as metaphorical (but sometimes literal!) 'lines in the sand'.

*There's no need to fear words like 'ceremony' - a fire ceremony is often as simple as lighting a candle!

About Dan: Dan is Learning Curator at the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK. Dan creates, facilitates, and consults on learning and development experiences for the higher education and business communities.