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
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