THE PATH IS MADE BY WALKING
Hi, I’m Erika
I’m a social entrepreneur, an educator & an artist.
Like so many, when I first got to university, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the world.
I only knew that I wanted to travel.
And since I loved reading and was always writing, be a writer.
So I dropped out.
For about 12 years I travelled.
I worked in advertising, hospitality, did 6 months of a cadetship at News Ltd, and then for the longest time, an English Teacher.
worked in Broome, Darwin, Sydney, London, Nagoya, Versailles, Caracas, Girona, Jakarta, Bangkok, Marseilles, Belfast, Almaty, Santa Cruz, China, Tibet… and I wrote, and I wrote and wrote until I finally finished the first draft of a novel: The Hotel Miramar.
That’s when I decided to do a BA in Writing.
In 1999 I came across The Artist’s Way, and wondered how I might be able to teach creativity instead of English.
While working as a teacher, finishing the last units of my degree, I decided to run workshops on the Artists’ Way, while I worked through it myself.
The workshops made no money, but everyone completed something they’d been wanting to do, including me: my first play, Trollop(e).
I got it funded, and I directed and produced it.
I got more funding for another novel, and I wrote a first draft.
Was on a writing roll, until one day one day I read the news about a report that found that young Aboriginal girls were being sexually abused an Community in Perth, then I realised, that Aboriginal people in Australia were having a really hard time, and I wanted to do something about it.
I enrolled in a Masters in International & Community Development, and got offered a semi-volunteering job in China, teaching Tibetan BA students at a Chinese University as as part of a international development NGO program - perfect.
Off I went.
I completed my Master’s and got offered job in Lhasa, where I spent a year, learning how to be a program manager.
I was not great at that.
REALISATION #1
At 19, on the corner of Shaftsbury Avenue, and something Lane, holding the artwork for the Harrods Black and White Broadsheet January Sale Campaign in one portfolio and a mock up for a Hennessy Brandy in another: this ‘work’ running around to make ads, to sell stuff, that nobody really needs, was meaningless - I only wanted to do meaningful work.
REALISATION #2
At 24 on a beach in Colombia, on the edge of the Caribbean Ocean, palm grove behind me, behind that the Sierra Nevada rainforest, I realised not that we are part of nature - but that we ARE nature or as Brene Brown puts it we are the wilderness.
REALISATION #3
At 37 - during a focus group with Tibetan women, every single culture has oppressors; the oppressed and the oppressors can quite quickly and easily exchange places. Human nature is not cultural. The Dalai Lama was not born in a place of peace and wisdom. Superstition is part of every religion, even Buddhism.
I did work out that you cannot change behaviours unless you change how people feel, and you can change how people feel by affecting their emotions and their senses, NOT through the intellect alone.
I looked into Theatre of the Oppressed - and applied to do a PhD in Education (Transformative Learning) and Role of the Practitioner in the Transformative Potential of Theatre of the Oppressed.The best thing about having a business, is that if you don’t know how to do something very well, you can contract people to do it, learn from them and still get paid.
That’s what I did at first when I established Act Out, a social enterprise through which I delivered several major community development projects in Perth, Broome, Derby, Carnarvon, Fremantle and Darwin, securing state and federal grants of up to $100,000.
They dealt with domestic violence with both survivors and perpetrators, sexual abuse, social exclusion, bullying, homelessness, family feuding, slut shaming.
I also delivered government, non-government and business organisations, speaking engagements. I used the profit from the jobs that paid really well, to be able to do community jobs that didn't have big budgets.
Simultaneously, I taught a range of subjects at universities in Perth - social policy, communication, academic writing skills, business edge, and finally, like a magic answer to an incantation, I was asked to teach Creativity and Innovation at Murdoch and at Edith Cowan Universities.
I also taught Zumba.
REALISATION #4
At 39, while typing up invoices for the first Act Out client, at 45 when I worked out that I had made 15,000 pocket money from my Zumba ‘hobby’ - I am an entrepreneur. I love having a business - if it works well, it means freedom to do something we love.
REALISATION #5
at 44, on a stage in a Perth health club teaching a Zumba class to about 40 women, I was finally living my childhood Solid Gold/Fame/ Flashdance dream of being a dance - sometimes dreams take a long time to come true and they don’t look the way we think they would, but they are fulfilling nonetheless.
REALISATION #6
at 46 - during my PhD graduation, when invited back on stage to sit with the other academics, my main supervisor stood up, turned to face the new doctors of philosophy, looked straight at me and bowed his head. I thought to myself, while I held back emotional tears ‘I am a finisher’ - I did it.
After I submitted my PhD, Waikato University sent me to Shanghai to teach International Relations, Media Studies, Popular Culture, English Literature and 15the Century European History!
While in Margaret River, I walked a lot on the Cape to Cape track. I decided to run a Creativity and Walking Retreat - working in the same way except the obstacle was doing the creative activities people say they want to do but don’t, and that’s how Edgewalkers was born.
One Creativity and Walking Retreat, and 8 years later Edgewalkers is now a small international ecotourism company specialising in Walking Adventures for Women, Walking with Wildflower Tours with a beautiful and strong brand, and a small aligned team of conscious women.
As I write this I’ve applied for funding for the Shape of Flowers, the play I started in 2015, and The Biodiversity Project is taking shape, and coming together to be part of Edgewalkers regenerative business model.
Creativity is our natural way of being in the world.
We are here to create and express our own unique version of life.
The Path is made by walking.
1.
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A MANIFESTO
CONSCIOUS - SUSTAINABLE - SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
regenerative
anything but PROFIT ONLY
BUSINESS …
the only profit worth making, is profit that does not come
at the expense of people,
biodiversity or the planet...
We are all creative - it’s in our DNA