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!

:-)