WE DESIGN LIFE WORKSHOPS
( 2 IN ONE WORKSHOP)
Continuous hands-on art workshops for the newcomers
……….
Everyone is creative enough and everyone knows enough skills to take a role in designing a more desirable life and society. But what can art do in the meantime?
On the one hand, what can art do for the displaced minds of the refugees and newcomers? those who each have different cultural backgrounds, plus probably carry different skills, experiences and ideas, which may have become confused and dusty on the way of this adventurous journey with the intention of a more desirable life.
On the other hand, what can art do for a neighborhood or a city? isn’t such a place an extraordinary spiritual feast? From the guests who each have their own stories and experiences. Can’t this improve the qualities of the neighborhood in a circle of intercultural relationship?
Through this relationship and settling displaced minds, isn’t it possible for creativity to be restored, topics to be raised, ideas to emerge, and skills to be taught or learned? In this regard, we thought of a plan, and a stable and continuous mechanism and activity, based on the idea of democratic art and emphasizing the power of artistic creativity in improving the qualities of a neighborhood( An important part of urban democracy term)
In these workshops, we try to use the simplest objects to activate people’s sense of belonging to their place of life and their history, and to call out their hidden creativity and skills. It has, first of all an effect on improving the quality of their daily life, and then it gives them skills that can be their future career field.
These workshops by BOOST are every friday 13:30 – 18:00, in which we ( Azade Baloochi and Peyman Gerami ) by focusing on the Illustration/Narration and Jewelry skills design a practice for every session, in which we will go towards the following goals:
1- Illustration/Narration workshop:
-How to illustrate your storybook?
-How to paint a t-shirt with your imagination and signs?
-How to do a real group mural in the neighborhood…
and…
2- Jewelry skills:
-How to turn the beauty of our culture into jewelry ?
-How to express our memories and stories through jewelry?
-How to organize a real jewelry show together?
-How these jewelry skills can be useful for our future profession
MY LIVING ROOM PRACTICE
The common experience in using nails and hammer was the focus of this art practice. Personalizing and strengthening the feeling of belonging to the place was the main content of this practice.
One of the common experiences of using nails and hammers is to hang something on the wall. We are trying to differentiate the living room wall of our house, which is similar to most of the living room walls, by hanging a picture/something. Through it, the participants established a new relationship with the living room of their home, where they spend most of their time. They tried to review all its corners and angles, what they like in it, like the sunshine in a part of it, find the color they have in mind for it, distinguish the point where they feel more secure, visualize what they want to change in it.
And finally, through this practice we tried together to make our connection with the most private place that belongs to us more regulated to love it.
Materials and tools: Nails and hammer.
Thread in different colors – acrylic paint – wooden board – photo
Achievement: Regulation of emotions in relation to one of the main places of a person’s life and trying to find hidden spaces and finally a more dynamic connection with that place and the communication network of people living in it.
Output: A collection titled ‘My Living Room’ was created with 8 works by the participants. which, while being their first work in this technique, is of the highest quality for presentation at the highest exhibition level.
SCRATCHING Self-Portrait practice
Material and tools: Nails and the feeling of scratching a surface with a sharp instrument Black spray – paper – laminated sheet – and colored pens and markers
Sybject and scenario: scratching a memento on the wall/tree/ground and associated memo- ries/desires
Skill: Basic principles of portrait drawing
Achievement:
1- Evoking the memories and desires associated with scratching, and emphasizing the memories that have apparently disappeared but can be traced on your portrait (personality).
2-The basic principles of portrait drawing and realizing the important role of emotions in the rep- resentation of a portraitOutput: About 15 self-portraits suitable for a group exhibition
Papier mache+creative writing+making earrings
Making earrings by the same words we would always like to hear.
\The words and sounds we always wanted to hear, we would like to hear every day, we expect to hear in the future. Sounds of nature or tone of voice of special people, in the form of a public sounds or private voice just for us. All these are the text written on the paper that was the material of our earrings. Words that will always be with us.
GLOBE PRACTICE WORKSHOP
This is your Globe. If you want the entire globe to look like a place you are interested in, where is that place? What does it look like? Your hometown? Where did you spend your childhood? Where did you fall in love? Somewhere in the past or future? An imaginary place? Imagine it in detail.
That was a basic practice to “look” carefully, visualize “creatively”, try to collage and combine freely, remove extras, and move towards making our imaginations real. It may be interesting to know, no artist/Human does anything other than these steps, but the difference is in the quality of these steps.
We participated in the result of this workshop and the design of the participants in a group exhibition as part of an exhibition called “buurt”, which was very well received.
MY HERO WORKSHOP
Who is our hero? What are the elements that we do not have? If we want to picture it, what elements can help us? If we are going to make a necklace out of it, we need some skills. In this exercise, we try to visualize it.
In this initial exercise to design a necklace, participants were helped to visualize their life heroes after the story telling practice in the first part of workshop. You can see a video of this session here
MARBLES PRACTICE WORKSHOP
It is important for us to deal with everything through which we can restore our sense of belonging to places.
Based on this, neighborhood’s games can be a strong connecting thread.
In this session, a creative practice was designed based on marbles, around which all the participants shared stories.
This was a step to emphasize the importance of the neighborhood as the first layer of connection between the individual and the society.
IN BUURT PRACTICE WORKSHOP
This is the #kraaipanstraat and #danietheronstraat , the former Jewish neighborhoods in Amsterdam. And World War II and the stories you know.
Where is a neighborhood?
The closest layer of the world and society to us, through which we experience and understand the history and many phenomena and where our stories are started…
What are a neighborhood’s belongings? What things connect us to it? the memories? Materials? Skills?
How has it affected our experience and perception?
How can belonging to the neighborhood and its assets be understood as the most radical core of an urban democracy?
Here in @stichtingboost, we think about all these questions, while we are design, narrate and illustrate our stories, get to know the material, learn some skills, and preparing for the final mural and jewelry skills show.
RESIN AND BUURT ASSETS WORKSHOP
In this practice, the participants were guided in advance to collect small things from their neighborhood. Dry plants, small stones, or something specific to their location.
During the session, they were taught how to make an ornament using the belongings of the neighborhood by teaching the skill of working with resin.
The purpose of this work, in addition to teaching the skill of working with resin as a basic skill, was to promote them to be meticulous about their neighborhood.
ANT STEP DRAWING AND JEWELRY CLAY WORKSHOP
This was the participants’ first experience working with clay. To come up with their own creative idea, they were guided to come up with random forms through observational design practice and use it to work with clay. They were taught the basics of working with clay and painting on it. The result of their work was beyond expectations as you can see in the pictures
MY MURAL PRACTICE
If you were to paint a mural in your neighborhood, the neighborhood you consider yourself to be from, what would you do? where is this wall What are its main elements?
Since one of the goals of these workshops is to make a group mural, as a first exercise the participants were asked to think about the above question and idea, and after filling out the creative form in the first part and storytelling about it. In the second part, started to find related forms among the lines of their own drawing
NEWCOMER; beginning of design for a group mural
This workshop was the first workshop in order to reach the final design of a group mural. The title and central figure of the newcomer. In the first part, the participants understood each other’s common spaces by filling in the creative form and writing keywords and narratives about the common experience of being a newcomer, and storytelling about it. In the next part, based on a pre-prepared abstract and preliminary design, they started to collage images. This meeting will be completed in the following meetings…
