What Lefika means to me: Kamal Naran

My name is Kamal Naran, I am 39 years old and based in Johannesburg. I enjoy anything art related, especially visual art. I believe in putting good out into the world, so I like to operate from the perspective that what I do is adding good to the world. I like sharing knowledge, and I enjoy when I get to be in spaces where I can share knowledge.
Some people have very complex relationships with Lefika La Phodiso, and other people are just starting off on a journey. I have a long-standing relationship with Lefika La Phodiso. I have trained as a community art counsellor, and trained to train on the Community Art Counselling programme. I have had many roles at Lefika La Phodiso, from program manager to volunteer coordinator and social media person, and my current role includes supervising the community art counsellors and interns and facilitating the volunteer training. I also interned here during my art therapy internship, seeing clients in Lefika La Phodiso’s low cost client clinic. My art therapy qualification has been helpful in terms of being able to provide more rich and substantial supervision and debriefing for the counsellors and to my facilitation of the community art counselling training.
My journey with Lefika La Phodiso started on good old Google. I searched for art therapy in South Africa and Lefika La Phodiso la Phodiso came up, and I came to visit one Saturday and found that it was closed, but I had found the space and came back to find out about the training. That is how my relationship with Lefika La Phodiso started. I did the community art counselling training first, and then I started volunteering. I have just recently qualified as an art therapist. I am quite happy that I got to see through this journey. Lefika La Phodiso was the beginning of my journey.

My drawing is a flame. It was the first thing that came to my mind and I was thinking about how things start with a spark. I feel like that’s how my journey started. There was the spark when I heard about this thing called art therapy, and then to find a space where that happens here in South Africa! At the time in 2012 there wasn’t any art therapy training in South Africa. Joining the community art counselling course felt like lighting that fire, starting the first little bits, the smoke coming up. Then going through the course, and volunteering with Lefika La Phodiso was like adding kindling to the fire so that it just keeps growing. That is what it’s all about.
Now I’ve got a whole campfire going. I can just keep it growing. There is something about this whole campfire metaphor, it’s the space you often sit around with people in a group, and you’re together in storytelling, you’re together in the quiet of nature.
To think about the things I resonate with at Lefika La Phodiso, and those things that I can take home with me and apply in my daily life, the first one is gratitude. Just to be more grateful for the things that I have and that I'm able to do. The second one is noticing the little things. I'm more aware of finding joy or noticing the little things, even when things aren't going well or feel like they're going wrong.

Download our 'Celebrating 30 years of community art counselling' here.