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hunger OF drawing II
WORKSHOP Developed as PART OF A SERIES OF WORKSHOPS
UNDER THE THEME “8 POSSIBILITIES OF MAKING DRAWING”
Drawing Spaces, Lisbon, Portugal
in partnership with Mansão D. Pedro IV, Marvila
18 SEPTEMBER 2011
WORKSHOP Developed as PART OF A SERIES OF WORKSHOPS
UNDER THE THEME “8 POSSIBILITIES OF MAKING DRAWING”
Drawing Spaces, Lisbon, Portugal
in partnership with Mansão D. Pedro IV, Marvila
18 SEPTEMBER 2011
REPORT 21 -
IDEAL
Intercultural Drawing for European Adult Learning
Intercultural Drawing for European Adult Learning
WHAT
This workshop aimed to encourage a group of senior participants from Mansão D. Pedro IV (neighbor to Drawing Spaces) to explore drawing with mediums produced from their everyday environment, particularly ingredients which they normally used in their kitchen and cooking environments.
WHERE
Drawing Spaces, Fábrica de Braço de Prata, Lisbon, Portugal.
WHEN
17 February 2011, 19h00-23h00
WHO
Facilitators and Staff
Francisco Pinheiro
Teresa Carneiro
Assistant from the Home Care Centre
ADULT LEARNERS
10 male and female seniors, residents at Mansão D. Pedro IV (Home Care Centre), Marvila, Lisbon, Portugal.
WHY
Mansão D. Pedro IV is a Home Care Centre with hospital facilities dedicated to elder people and adults with physical and mental impairments. Mansão D. Pedro IV is situated in Marvila, a socially and economically deprived area, where Drawing Spaces /Fábrica Braço de Prata is also situated. At the beginning of 2010 Drawing Spaces approached Mansão D. Pedro IV with a proposal to develop a continuing set of activities as part of the IDEAL – GRUNDTVIG project. The proposal was accepted and since then, Drawing Spaces has been periodically organizing and developing a series of activities for the senior community of Mansão D. Pedro IV, which have included, among its participants, some of the residents with physical and mental impairments.
Following ‘HUNGER FOR DRAWING I, in this session participants were encouraged to draw with ingredients familiar to them in their kitchen environment – olive oil, honey, blackberries, beet, among others. Drawing, painting and cooking were approached in what they had much in common: the method, the improvisation, the time, the performance, and the appeal to the senses.
HOW
VALUE FOR LEARNER
Participants learned that drawing can be a multi sensorial experience. Through the workshop, the drawing process was perceived and sensed by the participants as similar to other well known everyday methods and processes like cooking, breathing, improvising.
This group of senior participants hadn’t related for a while with the activity of cooking. At the home care centre they have an eating refectory and people preparing meals for them on a daily basis. As a lot of them developed physical limitations over time, they needed to go to a place where food was prepared to them. In this sense, participants felt very enthusiastic with the laboratorial set up for developing this activity, and particularly with the aspect of being able to engage with cooking materials from scratch, before being cooked. They were also quite amused with the possibility of doing something different with food, and about learning about new possibilities of relating to these things. They felt quite surprised and happy once they discover could produce ink out of food, and that food had extend properties rather than just being a food supply.
Participants were extremely active in engaging and participating in all parts of the proposed processes throughout the project. They showed to be very curious and interested in the working processes, but also in collaborating together and in experimentation with facilitators. Participants were also very surprised and happy with the results. The use of strong colours worked very well for them in the project.
VALUE FOR THE FACILITATORS
Facilitators learned how organic it was make participants relate to past experiences in their daily lives through this drawing activity. As this was one of the aims of the project, the feedback and reactions of the participants was extremely rewarding for the facilitators, as it made them felt that the workshop had produced very positive results in relations to its aims. Facilitators understood that working with a senior community on a kind of a laboratorial set is quite effective, as it is ‘hands on’ and this group of participants engage much better in ‘learning by doing’. Facilitators were extremely surprised with the very active participation of this group of adults, as well as with the results. Facilitators noted the care invested by the participants both in the processes of making the inks and mediums, as well as in the activity of producing drawing while experimenting with the materials that they had created. Facilitators noted that bringing strong colours to this activity was extremely adequate for the project.
VISUAL RECORDS
This workshop aimed to encourage a group of senior participants from Mansão D. Pedro IV (neighbor to Drawing Spaces) to explore drawing with mediums produced from their everyday environment, particularly ingredients which they normally used in their kitchen and cooking environments.
WHERE
Drawing Spaces, Fábrica de Braço de Prata, Lisbon, Portugal.
WHEN
17 February 2011, 19h00-23h00
WHO
Facilitators and Staff
Francisco Pinheiro
Teresa Carneiro
Assistant from the Home Care Centre
ADULT LEARNERS
10 male and female seniors, residents at Mansão D. Pedro IV (Home Care Centre), Marvila, Lisbon, Portugal.
WHY
Mansão D. Pedro IV is a Home Care Centre with hospital facilities dedicated to elder people and adults with physical and mental impairments. Mansão D. Pedro IV is situated in Marvila, a socially and economically deprived area, where Drawing Spaces /Fábrica Braço de Prata is also situated. At the beginning of 2010 Drawing Spaces approached Mansão D. Pedro IV with a proposal to develop a continuing set of activities as part of the IDEAL – GRUNDTVIG project. The proposal was accepted and since then, Drawing Spaces has been periodically organizing and developing a series of activities for the senior community of Mansão D. Pedro IV, which have included, among its participants, some of the residents with physical and mental impairments.
Following ‘HUNGER FOR DRAWING I, in this session participants were encouraged to draw with ingredients familiar to them in their kitchen environment – olive oil, honey, blackberries, beet, among others. Drawing, painting and cooking were approached in what they had much in common: the method, the improvisation, the time, the performance, and the appeal to the senses.
HOW
- After a short introduction to the activity, facilitators helped participants start to extract elements (pigments and products that served as medium to produce inks) by cutting vegetables and fruits that were brought to the session
- Some other ingredients, such as spices, honey and olive oil were also displayed on a common working table to then produce the mediums for making the drawings
- During this part of the session, some of the food ingredients were cooked in pans using a small camping gas oven. There was also a boiler that served to heat water and some other liquids to mix the extracted pigments.
- Besides the pans and boiler, plates, spoons and other cooking tools were also available on the working table, as well as the food and the ingredients that were being prepared and cooked. The environment was similar to a small kitchen set up where everybody was collaborating and cooking together.
- As the workshop developed, Francisco Pinheiro, the artist invited to create this workshop, provided different information about the elements that could be extracted from each ingredient, ways in which they could mix together to create different inks and other possible ingredients that could be used in similar ways if participants wanted to try to investigate further on this way of working, after the workshop.
- Francisco Pinheiro also provided contextual background related to these ways of producing ink and drawing materials, by talking about different ways in which pigments had been produced in the past as well as about artists that had done more experimental work with these processes.
- Participants were very active in helping to prepare, cook, mix and try out different combinations of mediums and pigments.
- During the second part of the session, participants set around a big working space where big sheets of paper, brushes, pencils and charcoal were available for them to work.
- Plates, glasses and small bottle caps were used as recipients to place the produced inks and split them among the participants.
- Participants were then asked to draw the rest of the vegetables and fruits that had been cut up in the first part of the activity, first using pencils and charcoal, then using the inks they had produced.
- This was a very experimental exercise which allowed the participants to relate back to the food as subject, while working with part of their elements to draw and relating to food as working material. Participants were extremely engaged in this exercise.
- After participants became more comfortable with the working tools, they were asked to think about the fluidity of the working material that they were using relating to the processes of transformation in which they were engaged at the beginning of the session.
- Listening to some music helped the participants to engage more easily with this exercise. Throughout these exercise comparisons were also made between the relations of the fluidity of music and the fluidity of drawing/painting mediums. Participants contributed to this discussion by thinking on what they sensed while making this exercise.
- Lastly, all drawings produced during this workshop were hanged on the long corridor walls of Drawing Spaces. Some works were also displayed on the ground as a lot of ants had been attracted to the sweet substances.
- Participants and Facilitators engaged on a very enjoyable discussion about the drawing approaches introduced in the workshop and what they might had in common with the activity of cooking: the method, the improvisation, the time, the performance, and the appeal to the senses.
VALUE FOR LEARNER
Participants learned that drawing can be a multi sensorial experience. Through the workshop, the drawing process was perceived and sensed by the participants as similar to other well known everyday methods and processes like cooking, breathing, improvising.
This group of senior participants hadn’t related for a while with the activity of cooking. At the home care centre they have an eating refectory and people preparing meals for them on a daily basis. As a lot of them developed physical limitations over time, they needed to go to a place where food was prepared to them. In this sense, participants felt very enthusiastic with the laboratorial set up for developing this activity, and particularly with the aspect of being able to engage with cooking materials from scratch, before being cooked. They were also quite amused with the possibility of doing something different with food, and about learning about new possibilities of relating to these things. They felt quite surprised and happy once they discover could produce ink out of food, and that food had extend properties rather than just being a food supply.
Participants were extremely active in engaging and participating in all parts of the proposed processes throughout the project. They showed to be very curious and interested in the working processes, but also in collaborating together and in experimentation with facilitators. Participants were also very surprised and happy with the results. The use of strong colours worked very well for them in the project.
VALUE FOR THE FACILITATORS
Facilitators learned how organic it was make participants relate to past experiences in their daily lives through this drawing activity. As this was one of the aims of the project, the feedback and reactions of the participants was extremely rewarding for the facilitators, as it made them felt that the workshop had produced very positive results in relations to its aims. Facilitators understood that working with a senior community on a kind of a laboratorial set is quite effective, as it is ‘hands on’ and this group of participants engage much better in ‘learning by doing’. Facilitators were extremely surprised with the very active participation of this group of adults, as well as with the results. Facilitators noted the care invested by the participants both in the processes of making the inks and mediums, as well as in the activity of producing drawing while experimenting with the materials that they had created. Facilitators noted that bringing strong colours to this activity was extremely adequate for the project.
VISUAL RECORDS
