According to Heather MacRae, CEO of the
Ideas Foundation and a friend of Richard’s, “he introduces himself as a storyteller”. As incredulous as this seems, it’s about as close to an accurate description as you’ll ever get. You see, Richard is the only person to date who has been to space, both North and South Poles, and the
Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the ocean. But Richard is not a passenger. The son of NASA astronaut, Owen Garriott and professional artist and naturalist, Helen Garriott, Richard is an active participant in the scientific aspects of all his expeditions, as well as documenting the experiences in photography and film. He then uses these and his own skills as a colourful raconteur to bring hidden worlds to life for others. In fact, he has layer after layer of purpose that together create skilful tales, threading the past, present and future together. And, in turn, these have different meanings for different people. Even his small recollections from events past are quite excellent…
"Alan Bean [NASA astronaut] knew that I’d been wanting to go to space my whole life, so he wrote me this very nice note: ‘Hey, Richard, I’m thrilled for you because you’re getting a chance to go to space. One, because I know you wanted this your whole life, and as improbable as it was to pull it off, you pulled it off! So, congratulations, I’m sure you’ll have a great time.’
He then followed up with, ‘It’s also really important that you and people like you are now going to have the chance to go travel in space. Your father and me, we were hired because we were military test pilots, or research scientists. But what we were not hired for is our ability to communicate.’”
And this is what makes him the perfect person to beam into a room of impressionable students, as he frequently does through the Ideas Foundation, and share his experiences and world view. Despite his wealth and incredible catalogue of travels and tales, he feels familiar and chats like a friend, with the occasional British-isms breaking through his American accent, a giveaway of English family roots. It’s with this same easy sociability and generosity of time that he decided to make every minute of his trip to the deep count, by making short videos for young people and their families and reading out cinquains (five-line poems) that had been written by youngsters in homage to the trip, as part of a
competition with the National Association for Teaching of English. While down there, he also created a sub-aquatic gallery of work produced by students of the
Canon Young People Programme, (appropriately on the subject of plastics in the ocean) and used the opportunity to showcase the work of Black artists represented by
Disrupt Space. The submersible ended up being packed with the thoughts, ideas and creativity of the young. “We were in and out of the sub two or three times prior to the dive, so each time I would go in and take a little more stuff with me and figure out where is there another little pocket or place I can stash some stuff,” he laughs.