City Mapping: Creative Methods Day 5

City Mapping: Creative Methods

Sharing creativity and ideas in through street art is and opportunity to engage the public with questions and themes that are important to us. So on our second day of our second weekend together, the group started by touring some of the well-known pieces of street art in Cork.

Getting inspiration from examples of existing street art in our own city was the foremost step to creating our own work of art as a group. We were to learn of the plans for our group project, soon... 

First, we visited a piece on Western Rd. near the Lancaster Gate apartments. The piece was made by a London-based group in the past few years. We took a minute to discuss what we liked about the piece and the effects we thought it might have on the nearby community. 

The second piece we visited was a "Before I die..." piece, at North Main and Kyle St. The "Before I die..." pieces have been made in many cities all over the world by artists and non-artists alike. The project is available online for free download so that any one who appreciates the piece's presence in their city can create the piece themselves. 

We took time to read the responses people put on the piece--some funny, some crude, some admirable, some moving. We discussed the nature of interactive murals/street art, and how involving citizen participation could be used for creative and positive change. 

Our third stop was a mural on Main St. With this mural we discussed different techniques for making street art. This piece is made like a collage, with printed images on paper that are tailored together and then sealed over, to create the large, colorful images in the mural. Using printed images seemed to suit this mural best, with its finer printed text, small details, and styles of faces. This work is by Cork based artist Tom Doig.

Then, we visited a piece was made by young people from Cork in a creative project facilitated by Mayfield Arts. We watched a stop-motion video of the making of the piece beforehand. This informed our experience of the steps took to make the beautiful mural. This mural was done mostly in paint with some elements of collage. Seeing the work in person and listening to the stories about the hardships and successes of the process were very inspiring. This price of street art proves testament that large-scale painting can happen under any weather conditions!

The last stop on our mural walk was another piece by a group from Mayfield arts. This group used lines of poetry they had written, applied with white paint and stencils on a black, textured background. The piece exists on wooden boards that block some sort of entry way that used to be in use on the Grand Parade and South Mall, near the bridge across from the Quay Co-op. One can see images of figures beneath the poem and feel a history of public messages on these boards. 

Back in our building, we started plans for our group project: a mural of our own! We learned briefly how to create in Photoshop the stylized portraits we would use for our mural. 

We broke into teams to draft possible compositions for our art piece, considering the inclusion of our portraits and lines of poetry, which the group had written the day before. 

Our concept: "In Our Tomorrow." This was the main thought behind the lines of poetry written in the group activity the previous day. 

We quickly assumed our skills and responsibilities for the project at hand, because we were to complete the mural in less than two days. Participatory processes like this with groups can often take much longer. We worked at quite a fast pace to get to see all the elements of the process in the short time frame we had for the weekend.

We were taught how to create stencils with stylized Photoshop images and card. We traced our Photoshop portraits by projecting the image onto the wall and tracing the black areas that would be cut out to create our stencils. 

Teams became busy mixing the limited color palette for the mural...

Creating our portrait stencils...

Choosing the font for the pillars in the mural that would have text, too...

Planning how the lines of poetry would best fit compositionally into our mural... 

And priming our background! 

We decided on a limited color palette of blues, skin colors for our portraits, blacks and whites. We were inspired by the calming capacity of the blue, which we felt worked well with the concept: "In Our Tomorrow." Responding to what we hope for "In Our Tomorrow," the group felt a sense of connectivity and fluidity should be expressed. We thought blues were conceptually relevant, and we thought of the River Lee, which is visible from the location of our mural site. 

We wrapped up the second day of the weekend with the groundwork done for our rapidly developing artwork.

City Mapping: Creative Methods Day 6

City Mapping: Creative Methods

On our third day of our weekend--the second and last day for completing our public art piece--we set out strong painting in the spaces for our text and our individual portraits. 

Some simple forms and  patterns  were added in the background.

Our composition sketch

We created black shapes that would serve as backgrounds for the text, giving a feeling of a flowing river. We assigned sizes of shapes to the lengths of the lines of poetry.

We readied our stencils and painted our silhouette stencil first with a beige ground. The flesh-like color helped to separate our portraits from the background, and to help the upcoming dark brown facial details to stand out.

Everyone fit their portraits in a horizontal line near the bottom of the composition. This line, for us, represents a confident group at a lower horizon, above which our dreams and imaginative lines of poetry float above our heads. 

The pillars in front of our mural were utilized by priming them all black and using their edges as placement for the title of our mural and poem. "In Our Tomorrow" was painted in white on the two frontal edges of both pillars to put the idea behind our work foremost in viewers' eyes--when walking on the street towards the mural from either direction. 

We moved onto stages of filling in our black shapes with our lines of poetry. First, we laid track lines of sorts with chalk for our hand writing to follow--to avoid the text looking to crowded, unbalanced, or illegible. We hand wrote our lines of poetry with paint markers.

We started laying in the dark brown facial details with our second/top stencil. We used sponges to control the paint within the cut out spaces. 

Our group started to grow in the mural right before our eyes, and we were able to visualize the end goal.

We finished our inspirational public art piece, "In Our Tomorrow," in less than two days' time! Talking while working, we all seemed to share how pleasantly surprised we were by our fruitful efforts over the past two days. We reflected in a discussion setting after the project upon the challenges of the weekend, and how we could better facilitate groups we might support in bringing creative messages to their city. We discussed the successes of the weekend and efforts we thought worked well throughout the process: Mostly, it was helpful that we all recognized each others' skills, and encouraged each other to work in the areas we might do best. We pulled the beautiful and meaningful mural together successfully and quickly because we supported each other, and worked as a team. Needless to say, we were very proud of each other in the end!

The proud group. 

Intro to Development Education and Creativity as a tool for Change. Day 1: Getting to Know each other and creative exercises/ Learning

On the first day of the CIT Creativity and Change Programme, the group got to know each other through activities that warmed up the conceptual and creative senses.  

One of the first activities was based in the medium of clay. The group split into two teams to create two collaborative pieces whilst responding to music. Both teams responded to the same music, varied and lively instrumental songs, which allowed for both teams to come up with open-ended and organic formations from the blocks of clay. 

Unintentionally, the two teams created clay works that seemed to exhibit juxtaposing themes, simultaneously. For example, individually and collectively the works had qualities that seemed open and closed; organic and man-made; orderly and chaotic; sheltered and unsheltered. The group was able to point out these thematic occurrences in discussion after the activity. 

The group reflected on the benefits of group creative exercises. Like, how working "shoulder to shoulder" and responding to music allowed artistic decisions to flow organically and automatically. The resulting pieces really inherited the flow of the process. This creative exercise helped set the open-minded tone for the weekend ahead. 

From this activity, the group asked, "What kind of teamwork supports our learning?" To which the group offered ideas like, creative communication, playfulness, respect, appreciation of what others have to offer, vulnerability... and others pictured, here. These were traits we had realized we had embodied during the team-based clay activity.

After brief discussion, we were presented with a wall full of quotes from past students of the programme. Individuals picked one quote that particularly resonated with their intentions for the programme--a quote we could foresee ourselves saying at the end of the programme. Some members shared quotes, as their intentions agreed! The activity spurred insight as to where individuals of the group come from--and where they would like to go with work in Development Education and Creativity and Change.

To familiarize ourselves with a spectrum of concepts relevant to existing work associated with Development Education and Creativity and Change, we followed this colorful chart provided. We shared aloud our previous conceptions of some terms like Values, The World Around Us, Info Design, Future Thinking, and other areas we might not have been discussed seriously, before. This spectrum associated to Development Education and Creativity and Change is a sort of guideline to us now, with a correlating list of published works and resources.

From these topics, it was necessary to reflect on the general types of education, today--and be aware of the education we set out to give and receive. As a group of individuals who work in many areas involved in these areas of education (Formal, Non-Formal, and Informal), we shared the similarities and differences between the types. We discussed which aspects may be more conducive to encouraging Development Education and Creativity and Change in our respective areas. 

(Non-formal education involves "Inclusion, critical thinking, obtaining knowledge, inspiration, Facilitators rather than Teachers, different facilities and resources than the Formal classroom, etc.")

(Informal education involves "Media, people you meet, experience, personal reflection, direct environment, and 'It just happens'.")

Collectively, the group thought Informal education was a type of education that constantly happens--an experience-based education that occurs simply by living. Also, the group discussed Informal education as the opposite of Formal education, in a way. Formal education involves "Structure, Curriculum, Discussion/Debate, Linear ness, Exclusivity" and other factors more restricting than those of Informal education. Some members of the group were more familiar with types of education than others, which was helpful for everyone to understand each other better. 

In the last activity before lunch, the group illustrated on chronological timelines the stages of their developing interests in topics related to Development Education and Creativity and Change. Many members began at the very beginning with their childhoods and explained significant steps and events along the way. To see our developing interests related to Creativity and Change as marked from a young age was moving, overall.  This activity was based in very personal reflection, as it generally demanded thoughtful excavating of our memories. 

A lot of the day's discussion led up to the defining of a Global Citizen. Through a drawing, we focused on associating traits related to the Head, Heart, and Hand that make a (possibly ideal) Global Citizen. Traits like "Listening, practical, reflective, reading," and others tied to the Head. For the Heart, "Values, empathy, emotional, passion, purpose" and others... For the Hand, "Skill, experienced, tangible"... And even for the Feet, we mentioned that "Travelling" could make up a Global Citizen. This activity involving drawing and critical thinking was a constructive start to the following brainstorming of what traits make a Global Citizen, and how we could all strive to embody such traits--and encourage others to do so, as well. 

At the end our first day, the group developed personalized boxes from an assortment of creative materials as tool kits for our upcoming work. As part of our assignments, the group will develop a tool kit that contains plans, activities, resources, and more, to aid in our actualizing of Creativity and Change and Development Education in our respective lives and areas of work. Additional assignments include reflective journals of the involved topics and activities we will cover throughout the programme. In the last moments of the day, we began to build the tool kit project that will grow into great evidence of our efforts during the programme.