On the third day of our introduction to Development Education and Creativity and Change, the group focused on creative ways of representing global themes.
To start the third day, a founding representative from Ireland's Clowns Without Borders (CWB) came to speak to us. He spoke to us about the past and upcoming projects of CWB, and their commitment to Development Education and Creativity and Change. CWB typically travels to parts of the world that lack emphasis on expressive public performances, like clown acts, due to severe conditions of poverty, lack of resources, lack of freedoms and rights, and more. CWB brings their original acts fills with props and humor to these areas of the world for the sole mission of making people smile. It was clear after his talk that you cannot put a price on the smile of child, and that the efforts of CWB are highly valuable in parts of the world, today.
For the first task of the day, the group was split up into teams of three or four and given an idea they needed to convey through an info graphics project.
For one group, a statistic was provided, stating that the "poorest 40% of the world utilized 5% of the world's income, and the richest 20% of the population used around three quarters of the world's income." As stated text, the statistic may be hard to comprehend and may not seem relevant to a reader, hence the task of creating visuals that would make the facts more accessible for people. For the aforementioned statistic, the group created a three slide project to explain the main components of the statistic sequentially. Other groups created animations, through which the whole group was able to see that time-based presentations can help separate information and add information by frame accordingly, for better explanation and comprehension for the viewer.
A time-lapse animation as info graphics, for one group's message.
On the afternoon of our last programme day of the weekend, the group had open studio time to develop different collage works that expressed our ideas of global citizenship and Development Education. Open studio time was a great time for our Creativity to help us brainstorm the types of Change we can make.
We each took to our own stations to develop collages on postcards, collages on badges, which we made with a professional badge maker, and even drawings, to practice our graphics harvesting! Graphics harvesting is a method of illustrating spoken information that is generally too hard to follow for people that are visual learners.
Our badge making station
At the end of open studio, many of us had completed works of collage driven by concepts of global citizenship and development education. Here are some of our pieces!
Each postcard is about 18 x 23 centimeters.
Some larger collages
Our badges! The idea behind the badges is to have a product one can wear everyday to express their beliefs on Creativity and Change.
To wrap up the last day of the programme weekend, we were to select--without much judgement--a photograph that captures how we were feeling. We each shared what elements of the images summarized our feelings at the end of the programme weekend.
We took note of last reflections from the course of the weekend that related to our selected images. The pictures helped us to create metaphoric meaning based on our experience over the weekend.
And to tie things together, we asked ourselves "Why creativity is important to learning?" This was almost an easy question for the group, after using so many different creative activities as chances for reflection on the importance of creativity in learning situations. Like we reflected between the different types of education on the first day, most of us felt Creativity was something that should be included in Informal learning--learning that happens constantly, just by living.
The group of the CIT Creativity and Change Programme 2014/2015!
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