Art Club Adolescents: introductions through music

OPENING NEW TEENAGE GROUP: Introductions through music

1st session 26th February: Stylized names

2nd session 5th March: Youtube profile

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

facilitated by the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  To open a new Art Club group with the teenage population that is attended individually by JUCONI pychologists in Socio Vivienda.  Recognising that music is a key part of the kids' lives in Socio Vivienda we decided to use this as a starting point, and in the same way that our first session with the new groups of younger children focused on a simple task of introducing ourselves with a simple name-based task,  with the adolescents we started off with a name writing activity, referencing the highly stylised lettering used in promo material by the most popular musicians listened to hear in Ecuador.  This was developed into Youtube video layouts the following week. 

PROCESS Session 1, Stylised names:  

1. Emily and I researched popular Ecuadorian musicians that would be familiar to the teens, asking Ronald and Jenny in JUCONI for tips.   Typically popular music in Ecuador is reggaeton, salsa and bachata and so the reference images that we printed out and mounted into a poster included Daddee Yankee, Farruko and Romeo Santos, each image containing the artist's name in stylised fonts.  

2.  We prepared a welcome questionaire for the teens, with a brief introduction to what Art Club is followed by some simple introductiory questions about themselves: name, age, who do they live with, what do they enjoy doing in their free time, what music do they like, do they like to dance etc.   The answers from these confirmed that their favourite styles of music are salsa choque, reggaeton and salsa and that the majority enjoy dancing. 

3. We also printed out sheets of different lettering style examples and alphabets that we placed back to back in clear plastic sleeves.  

4.  During the workshop we welcomed the teens to the group and individually went through the introductory questinaire with them, in interview style, with Emily or I asking them the questions and writing down their answers.  This gave us some personalised moments with each teen. 

5. As a group we looked at the reference images, asking the teens which musicians they recognised and liked and drawing their attention to the lettering styles. 

6.  Each teen decided which of their names to write (here everyone typically has 2 first names and 2 surnames, the first being their father's and the second their mother's) and choose their prefered lettering font.  With individual support they then wrote out their letters in pencil first, going over it later with felt pen in black or colour as desired.  They mounted this onto card and gave it a coloured-tape border as desired. 

MATERIALS, session 1: poster of images of popular musicians with stylised names, sheets of different lettering alphabets in plastic sleeves, A4 paper, pencils, rulers, biros, felt pens, card, PVA, colourful tapes, guilotine, camera. 

N.B. At the end of this first session, during the standard photo documentation that we always do of the children with their work, we asked the kids to pose individually as a 'musician' against a white background.  Some kids choose to pose and some prefered not to have their photos taken.  We respected this, and were interested to observe that the same teens who asked not to be photographed in this first session were much more relaxed the following week and keen to be photographed.  This seems a really positive sign that the kids have already start to build trust with us as facilitators and the space.  We have also been happy to observe that one of these teens in the first week who was particularly defensive and uncommunicative is now much more confident and chatty and visibly enjoying the workshops.  Perhaps because he came to the first session expecting something 'babayish' having had some experience of the children's Art Club, but now he sees that the activities are very specifically designed for his age and above?

PROCESS Session 2, Youtube layout:  

1. Returning to the same musicians that we looked at the week before, Emily and I printed out screengrabs of songs of theirs from Youtube as reference:

2. We adapted one of these screengrabs to be a blank Youtube template using Photoshop and for those kids who had wanted their photograph taken, Emily digitlly cut out their photo and added it into the blank video window: 

3.  The kids used pencils, crayons, biros and felt pens to draw in a background around their photo, or, in the case of not having a photo, drew in an image from scratch. They filled in their song title, artist name and the other videos down the 'watch next' bar at the side.  

With some of the kids returning for this second workshop it was encouraging to observe a noticeable increase in confidence and communication already.  In the first session JUCONI psychologists Favio and Isabel had acompanied their kids to the space, but this week we were back to the typical Art Club team: Emily, Ronald and myself.