Club de Arte 3.03: "Draw me to Safety"

THEME OF WEEK 3:03: Draw me to Safety

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

and the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  For our Art Club children to reflect on what, who and where makes them feel safe and to make drawings about this to submit to the international project "Draw me to Safety".  This is a creative project run by the NGO War Child, who are interested in comparing what saftey means for different children all over the world, making a comparison between children living in conflict zones and children living in countries that are at peace.  The end result of the project will be a t-shirt designed by Stell McCartney, based on the drawings of the children. 

PROCESS: 

1. To open the sessions we started out with a game that brings out issues of safety and trust.  The children work in pairs, where one child is blindfolded and the other child acts as guide, leading the blindfolded child around an obstacle course of chairs, at times allowed to speak and at other times not.  After playing the game we discussed how the children had felt.  Did the blindfolded children feel safe, did they trust their partner, how did their partner communicate with them?  How did the leader feel, did their partner respond to their guidance?  The intention here was that the children began to think about what helped them to feel safe in this situation:  a trustworthy partner, communication, being listened to, a friend, support.

2.  This led into further discussion about where the children feel safe and with whom.

3.  The drawn activity: Firstly the children cover a square of white paper with a thick layer of colourful wax crayon.  Secondly they add a second layer of thick oil pastel in eith dark navy, dark brown or black.  Finally, using a sharply pointed stick, they scratch into the layer of oil pastel, revealing the bright colours underneath.  With this method their drawing appears, an illustration of what makes them feel safe.

MATERIALS:  Scarves (for blindfolding the kids), CDs and CD player, instruction posters and examples, white printer paper cut into squares, wax crayons in bright colours, oil pastels in dark navy, dark brown and black, sharply pointed drawing sticks, camera.

Due to the deadline on the 31st October, this session was run only in Sergio Toral and Nueva Prosperina.  Take a  look at the kids designs here:

In Sergio Toral things that make the children feel safe are their families, their houses, their friends, their pets, the beach, the swimming pool 

and boats...

In Nueva Prosperina the children drew images of feeling safe 

with their families, friends, pets, in their houses and with JUCONI.

Having rushed to get all the children's images across to the War Child team in the UK for the 31st deadline it was a real delight to hear the following week that one of our kid's drawings has been selected as one of the best to move forward into the next round of the competition!  Here is the chosen image from 11-year-old Ed, which shows his family home in Sergio Toral, and has a beautiful message written into it:

         "I love my family, I love them with all my heart.  

I love the people of JUCONI.  Thank you for helping us."

During this last week's session we congratulated Ed by giving him a card and chocolates and gave all of the chilren in the group sweets in celebration of their hard work in the project.  It was lovely to see how excited they all were for their classmate and how motivated they were throughout that session.

Well done Ed!

:-)

Club de Arte 3.02: JUCONI stickers

THEME OF WEEK 3:02: JUCONI stickers

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

and the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  For our Art Club children to experiment with paint and collage to create their own designs for JUCONI's promotional stickers.  The idea being that the best designs will be printed up as a new batch of stickers.

PROCESS: We asked the children to start the activity by writing on the back of their sticker what they most like about JUCONI and then to use the paint and collage materials to illustrate this on the front, incorporating the colourful stick figures from JUCONI's logo into their design.

      MATERIALS:  Thin card pre-cut into squares and rectangles in the format of the original JUCONI stickers * instruction sheets and examples, original JUCONI stickers, paint, brushes, bowls and palettes, pencils and felt pens, scissors, glue, tissue paper, cotton wool, Fomix in the JUCONI colours (red, blue, yellow and green), t-shirts to protect the kids' clothes, soap and cloths, camera.

"You are the best JUCONI" 

"My favourite thing about JUCONI 

is to share things with my friends" 

"What I like about JUCONI is its art and the friendship, 

this is why I like JUCONI.  

I love you JUCONI you are friends of the children." 

        JUCONI sticker designs from our Art Club group in Sergio Toral.

You can see from the messages above and the range of colourful and energetic images that our Art Club kids produced that they really love football and also their friends!

:-)

P.S. As of this week this is our new Art Club team: (left to right) our new supporting JUCONI key worker Carolina Sojos,  ongoing JUCONI key worker Ronald Proaños, new camp volunteer Emily Legg and… ongoing cmap volunteer, me! :-)

Club de Arte 3.01: Mandalas

THEME OF WEEK 3:01: Reconnecting through mandalas.

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

and the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  Firstly to use the simple, personal and relaxing activity of drawing a mandala to reopen our three afternoon spaces in Nueva Prosperina, Sergio Toral and Socio Vivienda 2 and to start from scratch a new session on Monday mornings with another group in Socio Vivienda 2.  Secondly to gather information from the children about how they feel about their various skills through a self-evaluation table.  Thirdly, to hand back all of the work from the previous 2 stages of Art Club: "Our Community" and "Our Superheroes".

PROCESS:  The children create their own personalised mandala design in the circle on the handout, using coloured pencil crayons and markers, rulers and compasses to divide up the space.  Later they respond to the self-evalutation table by ticking the relevant box.

Mandala and self-evaluation sheets from Sergio Toral: the children were asked to tick the box of their choice from the selection "Very good, good, don't know, bad and very bad" to describe their ability in 1. communicating, 2. Respecting, 3. Colaborating and sharing, 4. Creating and 5. Trying new things.

The information gathered from the self-evaluation forms showed that 90% of the children believe themselves to be "very good" or "good" at communicating, 92% believe themselves to be "very good" or "good" at respecting and at creating and 84% believe themselves to be "very good" or "good" at sharing and collaborating and at doing new things.  In all areas with the exception of respecting this is an increase since the last self-evaluation taken back in May this year ("Very good" or "Good" in May 2014: Communicating 76%, Respecting 94%, Colaborating and Sharing and Creating both 61%, Trying new things 84%.).  We hope that this increase is a refecltion of the children's increasing self-confidence in themselves and their abilities through the Art Club workshops.

Materials: All of the work of the children from the previous sessions February to July 2014, instruction posters and examples, print-outs of the mandala & self-evaluation sheets, pencils, coloured pencils, rubber and sharpeners, rulers, compasses, felt pens and the camera.

Hard at work in Sergio Toral, continuing in the back room of Señor Napa's house.

                         Mandala designs from Sergio Toral.

Re-opening our space in Nueva Prosperina at the school La Sagrada Familia.

Mandala designs from Nueva Prosperina.

The new space in Socio Vivienda 2, in a church by the neighbourhood's football pitch.

Overall this was a great opening activity.  It was a real delight to see how happy the kids were at getting their old work back , in particular seeing their excitement at having photos of themselves amongst their creations!  Looking forward to seeing the work they will produce over this next term of Art Club.

One of the most unusual and original designs from this week (back at the beginning of October!)… a fierce looking creature from one of our 10-year-olds in Nueva Prosperina

Life inbetween Art Club: Mum!!

The week before last I had the amazing experience of having my Mum come out to visit me for 10 days!  We succeeded in our mission to see three of the four regions of Ecuador: coast (Playas for 2 nights) mountains (1 night in Baños) and jungle (a day tour through Puyo), the fourth region being the Galapagos.  Along the way we managed to see a vast range of exotic animals including giant Galapagos land turtles, crocodiles and dolphins and had many ´firsts´, completely new experiences.



Mum and I visited Parque Historico in Guayaquil and saw monkeys, sloths and flamingos.  Ty took us up to the look out point, the Mirador of Bellavista to look out across the city. Also, our very first day Mum and I walked for hours along the Malecón 2000, visited the Giant Lnad Turtle in the uni grounds and up to the lighthouse of las Peñas.

Went to Playas and nearby Puerto del Moro to see the manglars with men fishing up to their necks in water catching crabs, and to spot dolphins (the poor creatures seemed to be constantly trying to escape the noise of the boat's engine!).  Also ate delicious seafood, rode in tuc-tucs and played pool at the Delfin hostel that's grown to become our favourite!

 

 Mum and I headed to Baños and went on a one day tour of the jungle region surrounding Puyo,
seeing monkeys in a reserve and going down the river in a rocky canoe, plus bathing in a waterfall.

Cycling across to see the crocodiles of Isla Santay with Ty:

Plus at the end of it all we had a great day celebrating Mum´s 60th birthday on Sunday 28th September, with presents cake and tapas!

 

Thanks so much for coming to visit Mum, I miss you now you´re back home.

Lots of love! xxx

p.s. one of the presents for Mum was this (long overdue) design for Dad's headstone, intertwining the Scottish and Irish celtic knots: