Art Club 1.02: Carnival Cart Designs

THEME OF WEEK 1:02: Carnival Cart Designs

28th and 29th January 2015

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

and the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  To generate designs for the planned JUCONI-cmap carnival cart, where the children think about and include what is important to them in their communities and homes.

REFERENCE:  Looking at carnival carts from Brazil, Emily's hometown Bridgewater and Ambato here in Ecuador, where carts are typically covered in flowers, fruit and bread. 

PROCESS 1, SERGIO TORAL:  Originally Emily and I wanted to introduce a new technique to the children within this design session.  As this whole carnival cart project is based on the theme of home we wanted the children to directly reference their environments by making prints from objects found in the streets around their houses. So in Sergio the process was:

1. Each child picks 3 objects from the street.

2. As a big group look at the carnival cart examples and notice what things their makers have chosen to represent through them. Ask one another what is important to us in our homes and communities and what the children might want to represent on their carnival cart.  

3. Cut out the photocopy of the JUCONI truck and stick this in the middle of a large sheet of white paper.

4. Using paint makes prints of the objects found in the street, either directly ontop of the truck or on another piece of paper, cut out and stuck on.  Polystyrene is also available to make hand-drawn stamps to print from.

Although making prints from the objects found in the street was a fun process, Emily and I realised during the session that it wasn't the best approach for the children to generate designs for their carnival carts.  It was almost like we had 2 sessions merged into 1 and it was confusing for the children.   We are also experimenting with how it is to run an activity without bringing in a pre-made example, to try to reduce copying and stimulate the children's creativity more.  Hower in this session this did not work as the kids struggled with the concept of working directly ontop of the photocopy.  Overall the children were not happy with the results and were unusually restless and destructive at the end of this session.  As well as the issues in the planning of the session we believe this to be because of the sudden news of the end of their group in Art Club due to issues with funding within JUCONI affecting who we cmap volunteers are being asked to work with.  In evaluating this session Emily and I decided to simplify the process for the following session in Nueva Prosperina and to make a point of explaining the upcoming changes to the children again.

MATERIALS: A3 sheets of white paper, scissors, glue, photocopies of the JUCONI truck drawing from Emily, polystyrene, wooden sticks, paint, brushes, water bowls, water, cloths, felt scraps

Things important to the children in Sergio Toral in their communities and homes, seen in their designs and heard during discussion: the football pitch, the park, the flowers, trees, houses, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, playstations, families, animals and friends

PROCESS 2, NUEVA PROSPERINA:  Taking onboard the observations from Sergio Toral, Emily and I simplified the activity to a collaged design.

1. As a big group look at the carnival cart examples and notice what things their makers have chosen to represent through them. Ask one another what is important to us in our homes and communities and what the children might want to represent on their carnival cart.   

2. Cut out the photocopy of the JUCONI truck and stick this in the middle of a large sheet of white paper.

3. Using paper scraps, felt and marker pens, the children decorate their trucks in groups of 2-4 with the things that are important to them in their communities and homes.  

MATERIALS:  A3 sheets of white paper, scissors, glue, photocopies of the JUCONI truck drawing from Emily, marker pens, felt, feathers, tissue paper, trasparent coloured papers, colourful animal and people-shaped plastic tiles

Happily this was a much more successful session, as you can see through the results which are notably clearer as designs:

Things important to the children in Nueva Prosperina in their communities and homes, seen in their designs and heard during discussion: the football pitch, their homes, school, trees, plants, flowers, families, friends, animals, cats, cars and food (specifically chicken)

Based on these designs from Sergio Toral and the images that we saw come through in the collages of the homes of the children in Socio Vivienda and Nueva Prosperina, Emily and I came up with this carnival cart design inbetween the two sessions described above: 

So now it's time to start working on the various elements that will be used to transform the truck into this carnival representation of home!