Club de arte 2012!

Club de arte 2012 is well and truly underway!  We've completed our third week as sole facilitators... our pirate project climaxes next week with our obra de teatro (play), 'El Mito del Pirata tonto' (The myth of the silly Pirate).

I'm finding it hard to find enough hours in the day to keep up my correspondence with England AND sleep a sufficient amount.  Ask Alma (Mum), as she informed me this week I hadn't made contact with her since my birthday on the 5th January...oops...

But we have good reason to be busy, having kickstarted our Pirates project in early January.  We introduced large murals as our first excercise in encouraging collaboration and group work (Please see previous post with project objectives).

The pirate ship mural in Nueva Prosperina - we prepared a base image and colour, and the kids added the rest in the workshops.

We have weekly workshops in 4 different areas of the city (Barrios).  We made a different mural with each group, with a different main image - but all the murals have the same horizon point, so we can hang them together when the exhibition comes around... so ALL the groups have produced a collaborative work together.

Painting the murals in Balerio Estacio (L) and Fertisa (R).

In Balerio Estacio one kind family lets us hold art club in their garden every week!

The groups are large for art club at the moment, CMAP have a rule of no more than 25 attendees, but in reality many more community kids* have been coming along and facilitators with big hearts have found it impossible to turn the children away!  It is a great accolade to the workshops that so many kids come back week in week out, and encourage their friends to come too, but our capacity is not limitless and the more kids we have, the less 121 time we can spend with each of them.  This is a work in progress, and we are determined to solve this dilemma!  In the mean time, however, we have had to split the group so half works with Chloe on making stick-on elements for the mural, whilst the other half paint the mural with me... in following weeks the groups will swap so everybody gets a turn.

(Finished mural photos coming soon!)

*1.  Community kids, meaning children who are not associated with or supported by the JUCONI charity, but nevertheless live in the same slum area, may be street-working, and have very little opportunity to partake in art activities or any extra-curricular clubs.

Family visits...

When I was four, I 'stole' a plastic toy pear from Sunday school (making my religious sentiments clear from an early age!), Mum was horrified.  But I didn't have one, and I thought I needed one, I thought my toy kitchen at home would be much better if it had a plastic pear in the fruit bowl!  I never knew what it was to do without anything (can say that now... let's not discuss my moaning adolescent years).  On visits in the Barrios (slums) this week,  many kids tried to steal pencils and paper, hiding them when I was leaving their house, whilst I was pretending to be oblivious.  Those kids thought their home/afternoon would be better with those pencils in it, I agree with them.  I think that's a big part of CMAP and why I'm here.

I know art isn't essential to live and breathe.  But I believe community arts projects are a really beneficial thing for many young people.  For creative and emotional development, self expression, communication and social skills.  There is a lack of this developmental support here, and that's the void CMAP aims to fill, at least in part.  The really serious stuff - food, medicine, therapy- all comes from JUCONI.

After two days on visits with JUCONI Orientadores (Psychologists), I am filled with admiration for what they do.  I wish I had the skills and strength to do the same.

Last thursday, January 5th, was my birthday and I spent it out on family visits in the Southern Barrios of Guayaquil.  I got pooed on by a baby who had no nappies, got bitten by a thousand mosquitos, saw the living conditions in some of the houses, was party to discussions with many Mothers about the problems they are facing, and met a lot of wonderful people, especially children.  My first day of adulthood (being 25...I consider myself almost an adult) I felt naieve, futile and guilty.  It's hard to express my experience or feelings, I choose my words carefully - I don't have the right to 'feel' sympathy and I'm nowhere near understanding the complexity of politics surrounding these slums.  I also have no right to show you inside the homes of the people who welcomed me in, so I shant describe much.  At the end of my birthday I came home, to my flat in the city and ate chocolate cake and drank wine with friends.  The contrast has left me feeling very conflicted, it's impossible to justify.

¡Feliz año nuevo!

For Chloe and I, the real work starts here.... Club de Arte 2012 with Claudia y Raquel!! (Nuestros nombres en  Español, de acuerdo a los ninos en Club de Arte).

I have avoided blogging thus far for a few reasons; the first being that I am the only follower of said blog, but also these seven weeks have been exhausting.  Through my (still struggled) attempts at Spanish, homesickness, stomach bugs, poor skype signal and moving to the worlds biggest, hottest metropolis, at times I have felt myself too frustrated and tired to write much of interest.  

But, as I said, it all starts here!  We begin our long anticipated Club de Arte projects next Monday, so many more frequent and exciting blog posts to come!

We've been planning hard through the end of December, and presented our ideas to our partner charity JUCONI before their offices closed for Christmas.  We had a really positive response fromt he team of Psychologists who work with the supported children and families.

Working with themes that JUCONI has suggested, and our own observations from two weeks attending Club de Arte with Helen and Erika, we have felt the most urgent thing to encourage is group work.

Central to Participatory practice is that everybody participates in the activity, with no imperialist teaching but simply an encouragement of expression and creativity.  Collaborative work is needed within the Club de Arte groups at this present time to encourage social skills, diplomacy and tolerance of others.   In our time observing Club de Arte we have seen displays of conflict and violence between the children, and a lot of negativity about their own talents, and the work of others.

By introducing large scale collaborative art we hope to encourage a pride and joy in the process and the product, with less emphasis on individual skills or intricate drawing, and more emphasis in the overwhelming power of large art.

We are kicking off next week with large scale murals- just for a bit of a challenge!  these murals will serve to create our 'world of imagination', ever present throughout the project, they represent our stepping into a new world, with an atmosphere of fun and creativity, the murals will help us leave behind our physical environment (often a school classroom) and release inhibitions and the tensions of the day.

I don't want to bore you with the whole project document, but please have a read of the Synopsis for our first Club de Arte project - Piratas y Puertos.

Synopsis

Our first project with Club de Arte 2012 uses the theme of pirates to explore the purpose of a sea port, most specifically Guayaquil port and its history.  The fun theme allows us to create a ‘world’ in our collective imagination, which is key to achieving our aims for the project and allows us to learn about history and trade in a creative and stimulating environment.

The project aims to encourage collaboration within the children; JUCONI and Club de Arte have recognised a need for group working situations.  We will use large scale art such as murals and sculpture so the children need to work together, respect each others views and make decisions as a group.  The emphasis on collaboration will encourage us to be free of inhibitions and self-deprecation that can impede individual work.

The first session concentrates on creating our ‘imaginary world’ – all members of the pirate crew will be initiated in and given a red pirate bandana which they scribe their name on.  ‘Pirate portraits’ will be taken to record our pirate crew. Together we will create a large mural of  a sea/port/ship scape using pictures of Guayaquil as inspiration and adding artistic flare!  The mural and bandanas will be used during every session to ensure we step into our ‘pirate world’ each week.

Aims

Collaboration                                       

Community                                                          

Produce large scale art

Confidence building