Theme of the month: Human Rights
Focus of the week: Your Look Can Transform Our Lives
Knowing we had the mural project and the event of the 8th coming up we set our theme for the last two weeks as the mural slogan "O seu olhar pode transformar as nossas visas" - Your look can transform our lives.
Rita is concerned that a lot of our girls at Meninadança's Pink House are marginalised within Medina, where it seems there exists a lot of prejudice related to which neighbourhood people come from, particularly as many of the girls come from neighbourhoods notorious for their violence and drug trafficking. So we wanted to talk about how the way other people see us can affect us, for better or worse, and the shifts that can happen in us if people see us in a different way.
As an introduction to our theme we looked at the video above and discussed how people began to see the blind man differently with a small shift in the wording of his plaque so that he became not just another anonymous beggar on the street, but a fellow human being with feelings and hopes.
Rachel followed this up by inviting the girls to look at Banksy's"flower thrower" graffiti from his work at the West Bank in Israel in 2005, showing it first with the flowers hidden behind her hand and asking the girls what they thought about the person they saw. The answers the girls gave were all negative they saw someone violent, up to no good, a hooligan. When asked what he might be throwing the answers wet all equally negative, so of course they were surprised and I would say perhaps intrigued to see that despite his clothing the bloke i s throwing something beautiful and peaceful, flowers.
By noticing the change in the girls opinion about the man, we hoped to demonstrate how a small shift in the way we look at someone may mean we see something new in them and can change our perspective about who they are and what they are like, inviting the girls to thing about the possibility of the community of Medina seeing them differently. During the conversation circles throughout the week the educators also touched on ways in which the girls can encourage the community to see them differently in the ways they dress and behave.
Week's Project: Each girl to create a personalised 'flower-eye' in response to the theme, made up of three parts:
Part 1: a postcard with three questions designed to facilitate each girls personal reflection on our theme by asking how she feels she is perceived by the community of Medina, what she would like to see change in her life and how she believes the community of Medina could affect change.
Part 2: a cardboard plaque decorated in response to the theme, to inspire me in developing the mural design.
Part 3: a decorated flower-pot base to hold the card as though it were a growing flower, and to allow the cards to be displayed during the performance on the 8th.
Project Aim: To encourage the girls to reflect on what they would like to express for their community about how they are seen and heard. Facilitating collaboration between the girls and myself in preparation for the mural painting, seeing what images and words they would like to see included in the mural design.
PROCESS
1. Showing examples: After discussing the introduction reference I shared my initial mural designs with the girls and asked them to think about what they would like to see included on the wall. We also showed them this test example of the flowers they would produce.
My test example for the girls: Peace, Love, Equality
2. Creating the cardboard flower heads. Each girl was given a photocopy of the questions in this postcard format and a blank piece of cardboard. The girls were free to answer the questions and use paints and collage to decorate the postcard in her own personal style and were encouraged to use imagery and words in response to the theme. (This format and layout was developed from my ONE postcard project.)
As it turns out the majority of the girls worked on either eyes, hearts or variations of the Brazilian flag. Multiple mouths also featured in the detail of the collage of a couple of the pieces. The one card which stands out as being very different is the man's face with its blackened tooth. When asked what this image represented for her this girl replied that it was anyone that looked at them badly.
3. Creating the flower pots. We cut up old plastic bottles and the girls used collage and paint to decorate the pots in their own personal style, again in response to the theme. We weighted the pots with stones and sand and used a combination of wire, wooden clothes-pegs and coloured foam sheets to create stems and leaves to secure the cards.
(Tip for repeating this in the future: use either a stronger stem system or more light-weight cardboard for the cardboard heads, because although these worked and look great, some were slightly wobbly.)
4: The final product:
(left to right) Peace, Unity, Love, Respect, Affection, Justice, Rights / Don't judge to not be judged, Respect, your life will change. Harmony, happiness, equality. / Peace, solidarity, friendship.
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? Like nothing because for society they have a lot of money in the pocket and nothing matters.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
My family and friends.... [scrubbed out]
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
Doing with hope and justice.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
My family and friends.... [scrubbed out]
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
Doing with hope and justice.
[14 year-old girl]
(See more of the girls responses just below)
5. Reinforcing the theme in conversation circles: Changing our perspective: "Lixo to luxo". Cristina came up with a brilliant exercise for the conversation circle to reinforce the theme by invite the girls to think about perspective. She took them briefly into the street and asked them each to pick up anything that was lying around. Many of the objects the girls picked up were discarded items that most folk would see as rubbish, like old cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, a crushed cigarette packet, other items were fallen or picked plants. After looking at what each girl had chosen Cristina then went through each item and named another use for it, either as an art material, or in the case of a fallen seed, as an instrument.
This simple exercise had a clear message and reminded me of the brilliant film "Wasteland" that I've already referred to a couple of times on this blog. Here we showed it as an example to the girls of a concrete example of a dramatic shift in perspective. Through his project, Vik Muñiz transforms what was rubbish for some people into beautiful portraits of recycling workers at Rio's Jardim Gramacho rubbish dump that sold for thousands of pounds at auctions in London's Sotheby's.
(Left) the workers sorting recylable materials from rubbish at Rio's Jardim Gramacho. (Right) one of the portraits of the workers, all created from recyclable materials taken from the dump.
Interestingly the film's name in Portuguese is "Lixo Extraordinario" which translates more directly as "Extraordinary rubbish, which seems more of a positive take and connects it directly with our project about how the way we see something can transform it. This was a timely topic and piece of reference material because since I've arrived we've been using recycled materials in our art projects, mainly cardboard boxes and plastic bottles that we've either picked up directly from the street, collected from shops or the girls have gathered from their families and neighbours. My motivation has been twofold: in part in order to minimise resources and in part because of my interest in the new life you can bring to old materials whilst at the same time being environmentally conscious, so it has been a pleasure to see how responsive the girls and educators have been to these materials.
More of the girls' images and perspectives on the theme: (translation in part)
God
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? Some look at me well ash others badly.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
That people have more love in the world.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
Respect and free-time. To have a clean community.
[12 year-old girl]
[12 year-old girl]
Help
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
Everything
[12 year-old girl]
[12 year-old girl]
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
The violence in the city.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
To stop the violence.
[10 year-old girl]
[10 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? With a strange look.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life? Many things
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
Stop the violence and many people dying.
[12 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? They don't look. They don't worry about anybody.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
That my life is no longer in the city. Yes
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
I don't believe, because they don't do anything in our lives.
[15 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? With a look of difference, they judge me and not for themselves.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
To end the deaths in Medina.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
To build and create ideas for Medina.
[13 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you?
Very bad because they use drugs.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
I would like for nobody to smoke or drink.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
To have respect and to give respect.
[10 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? They see me with wicked looks and with exclusion
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
I would like people to stop talking badly about other peoples lives and stop poking their nose where its not wanted.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
I believe that they can transform themselves into good people and friends.
[13 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? They look at me very little
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
That my mother stops drinking.
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
To have less fighting.
[9 year-old girl]
1. How do you think the community of Medina sees you? With looks of affection and love and others with looks of trouble and anger.
2. What things would you like to see transformed in your life?
That people stop looking based on appearance, yes look at me with love and peace
3. What do you believe the community can do to transform your life?
that they help people and respect people whether they are white or black.
[9 year-old girl]
And one final point is to mention a very important occasion that we celebrated in the house during this week - our beautiful director Rita's birthday. Both the morning and afternoon group of girls made her a big shared cards and Dani and Casilandiã baked this huge cake.....delicious! Feliz Aniversario Rita.
:-)
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