In their video, PHETE members take full advantage of being in a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve.

When Congress 2014 came to Brock University during the final week of May, it brought thousands of people to a campus that’s located in a UNESCO-protected biosphere, with significant ties to the indigenous peoples of this territory.  Brock is a place where one can be in a Carolinian forest or on the Bruce Trail without leaving the campus.

So on Saturday May 24, just as the Congress schedule of events was getting started, some 20 members of the group Physical and Health Education Teacher Educators (PHETE) spent a half-day walking, talking and holding sessions in some of the spaces and places that make Brock unique.

It led to, among other things, a high-energy video produced by University of Victoria Professor Tim Hopper, that has now turned up on YouTube.

“In keeping with the 2013 PHETE pre-conference sensibility,” said Brock physical education and kinesiology Professor Maureen Connolly, “we invited proposals for experiential sessions related to four broadly interpreted contexts: Forest and Trail Walk and Talk; Dance, Drum and Rhythm; (Re) Orient/eer/ing, and Playing with Fire.”

Connolly calls the video “a compressed expression” of the group’s time together.

“We were fortunate to have an array of outdoor and indoor spaces and places: forest, trails, fire-pit, studios, big and small, vast and intimate, and an equally tantalizing array of proposed sessions, from contact improv, to orienteering with a twist to Tai Chi at the fire pit.

“We were delighted to facilitate those interested in offering sessions within the broad contexts indicated.”