Club de Arte 3: "Our Hands - Our Values"

ONGOING THEME: Our Art Club Community

WEEK 3: Our hands - Our Values

IDEA AND AIMS: This is our third community-building activity here at CMAP's Club de Arte with JUCONI and the idea was to give the children an opportunity to reflect on what is important to them within their community of Art Club, and in adding their own decorated hands to the group's Tree of Values, to recognise themselves as a valuable part of a collaborative process. 

Instructions and examples (above): friendship, peace, hope

and the list of suggested words for the kids to use as inspiration (below):

PROCESS: 

1. We asked the kids to choose words that are important to them either from a list we had written or anything else they liked. 

2. They then drew around their hands onto paper and decorated these hands with the words they’d chosen and any images and colours representing what that word means for them. 

3. They cut out their finished hands and stuck them like leaves to the group’s ‘tree’ of “Our Values”.

TAKE A LOOK AT THE KID'S HANDS AND THE GROUP'S TREES:

The Sergio Toral Values Tree (above). The children in Sergio Toral decorated their hands with the words love, faith, family, home, friends, health, friendship, hope, peace, games, freedom, heart, education

(see their individual hands in the photo at the top of this post)

SOCIO VIVIENDA (above, individual hands, below group tree) the kids chose to decorate their hands with the words faith, family, love, home, games, friendship, education, equality, freedom, support, dreams

NUEVA PROSPERINA (above, individual hands, below details from group tree and below that the full group tree)The children choose to decorate their hands with the words family, dreams, love, faith, school, peace, friendship, hope, support, education, mum and dad

Thanks to all the kids for all the enthusiasm so far! 

:-)

Carnaval in Ambato!

This weekend was carnival-weekend all over South America, and as Millie pointed out, it is the celebration and excess preceding the 40 days of lent leading into Easter in the Christian calendar.  Ty's opinion on it is that the current fleshy-take on it is a distortion of the pre-Christian indigenous celebrations of feasting on meat (carni = carne (in Spanish) = meat).

Here in Ecuador we were told that Ambato was a good place to see some of the traditional celebrations of Ecuador's take on carnival, so Jonny, Becky, Ty and me headed to Ambato for the Fiesta de la Fruta y Flores:

 The main event: a stunning procession of floats decorated in flowers, fruits and bread

The other significant part of carnival here in Ecuador turns out to be spraying or soaking anyone and everyone with water or foam! We got swept up in the play and spray…until Jonny's i-phone getting nicked put a dampener on the evening :-(

Murals spotted a-wandering Ambato's oddly quiet streets the morning after carnival-chaos!  

Amazing paintings we spotted in a gallery in the centre of Ambato, by local artist Héctor Oswaldo Supe.

  "I walk barefoot on a rocky road 

decorating the path with my hands I leave 

images of thousands of colors you will see my footprint

and the reflection of my soul remains in history" 

Ecuadorian artist Héctor Oswaldo Supe

On the way home: trying guinea-pig for the first time (conclusion = sticky meat, hard to eat enough of the animal to feel like it's death was justified, and seeing the carcasses rotate on the spit is not that saliva-inducing).

Thanks to Jonny, Becky and Tyron for a great carnival weekend.

:-)

Club de Arte 2: "Our Space"

"I don't like violence. /

 I don't like to fight. / I don't like to be petty."

Continuing with the theme of introductions and welcome to the CMAP Club de Arte community our next activity was “Our Space”.  This was a collaborative effort with the children to set rules and boundaries for the space: what would they like in terms of behaviour and activities within the space of Club de Arte, and what would they not like?

In Nueva Prosperina's Club de Arte we like: 

to paint, to experiment with materials, to make art, to make things, to learn, to share, to laugh, to smile, to have friends, to be generous, snack-time and to play football and basketball.

In Nueva Prosperina's Club de Arte we don’t like: 

to fight, to be petty, to use bad words, to tease one another, violence.

Having decided on their rules, the kids wrote their phrases onto colourful Fomex, decorated them and stuck them to a huge sheet:

Based on what the children from the three different groups shared and on what our Art Club team believe is best for the group Jonny and I created these two sheets explaining the structure of Art Club and its rules, what I learned with Kids Company to call a working alliance:

Art Club is a space for girls and boys from 7 to 13 years old to create, draw, paint, learn, play and enjoy themselves :-) / Structure of the session: * Welcome * Relaxation game * Art activity * Photos of work * Clean-up * Snack * Goodbye (left)

To feel good in Art Club we all have to: respect one another, communicate,  share,  behave well,  listen, not fight, not use bad words, not shout, not interrupt, not to annoy one another, not to bully one another (right)  

And the idea of all this?  

To create a happy and safe Art Club space where we can do lots of making, 

and where we can do more of this…

…and this..!

!! 

:-)

Club de Arte 2014 launch: "Our Puzzle"

Wow, how time has flown! After arriving here in Guayaquil back at the end of January and after a fascinating month of inductions, planning and getting to know my new colleagues here at JUCONI we are already now into our third week of CMAP's Club de Arte 2014. And it´s brilliant – energetic, colourful, messy, hot, definitely fun, plus the kids are great!

It happens that my arrival at JUCONI has coincided with a lot of change at the organisation; there has been internal restructuring and also many families have graduated from the program while new families have been invited to join. The impact of all this change for Club de Arte is that we now part of JUCONI´s Community Team and most importantly that two of the three groups Tracey and Jonny worked with last year have come to an end and two new groups are now beginning.

All three of the neighbourhoods Club de Arte is now working in are in the north of Guayaquil, and here’s a brief introduction to each group:

1. Nueva Prosperina. 

This is the one group which continues on from last year, on Thursday afternoons. This was the first group that we worked with this year and it was a great introduciton for me to see how warmly the kids greeted Jonny, flinging themselves at him with huge hugs! We´re off to a great start, with a very large group of 20+ in each session so far and with half of the kids being known to JUCONI and the others new it’s been really important to work with group bonding. As well as all our initial art club activities revolving round introductions and community our supporting orienteer Ronald came up with a good warm-up exercise where each child introduced themselves to another they had never met before, shaking hands and sharing their names.

2. Socio Vivienda 2

The first of our completely new groups, we’ll be working with the kids in Socio Vivienda 2 on Monday afternoons. This is a very new neighbourhood which has been built to rehouse many families from the south who were living in high-risk conditions along or over the edge of the estuary. Some of the kids in this group used to attend Club de Arte in the south in Isla Trinitaria, others are known to JUCONI because of being relatives of our collaborating photographer Blanca and others are just starting out on their JUCONI journey.

3. Sergio Toral

Our second new group, run on Wednesday afternoons, is so far full of children who are completely new to JUCONI. From the first session we noticed a strong group identity, when the kids asked for group photos (on that day it was an all-boy group, now we’ve had a few girls join us too).

Session 1 "Our Puzzle" instructions and facilitator examples

1st Club de Arte Activity: “Our Puzzle”

With it being the start of a new Club de Arte year, with plenty of new kids and with me as a new CMAP facilitator, our focus in all the activities we've been planning for these initial weeks has been introducing everyone to one another and welcoming everyone to the Club de Arte community.

We started each group off with “Our Puzzle”, where each child created a large puzzle piece decorated with their name, age and things they liked. 

This served both as an opportunity to learn one another’s names and personalities, and also in the process of joining it together to reflect on the symbolism of the puzzle as representing our community of Club de Arte.

It's great to have finally met all three groups.

And I owe a big huge thanks to all my new colleagues at JUCONI for the great welcome to the team over these last weeks, which has made this start to the year so smooth and happy. Particular thanks to the Club de Arte team: photographer Blanca, support orienter Ronald and most especially, CMAP veteran and my partner for the year, Jonny whose thorough induction has been invaluable!

 :-)