‘There is an artist in everyone’
There must be some famous person who has said that there is an artist in everyone. If there is not, then let me claim this statement because if there isn’t an artist in everyone, there is at least one in all the children I worked with so far!
The Drop In Centre has been slowly getting more colour on its walls every week. The S.A.L.V.E. sign is now finished and is proudly perched on the top of the cupboard for everyone to see when they join the class. To add a few creative learning tools we worked on the alphabet and numbers, and children got to say and draw which key words will appear next to each of the letters – so the classroom now contains. for example. a lizard, a kettle, a nose, a queen and a saxophone. And children love the colouring books – they have created sophisticated decorations using both traditional colouring books as well as different creative ones. They will be hanging across the classroom soon.
Some more shopping had to be done – plywood (so that the cupboard in the drop in can be fixed, decorated and used for storing the exercise books), jerry cans and sugar sacks (for the training day with the families so that they can learn how to do sack mounts), stanley knives (for the training too – it will be a useful tool to keep), more nails (to ensure kids can bang away with their string art creations). Let me just say that it was a fun boda boda (motorbike) ride with all of this at once!
Training Day Preparations Continue
The training day for families on S.A.L.V.E.’s business support programme is ready to go. The feedback and support from the local team has been wonderful. The families who have little or no access to land for farming have been selected as those who would benefit most from the learning. The budget for travel and food for the day is in place, the cooking arrangements have been made. The resources which we will use and give out were missing a local connection – a very important point. People need to be able to recognise themselves in the stories so that suggestions we are bringing to share do not feel too remote. Thus, I searched for local stories and pictures of people growing plants/food in small containers and found several tangible examples which will hopefully help to inspire and provoke thought and action.
String Art
The children in Half-Way House and Drug Rehabilitation Centre were the first to have a go at string art for half a day each. And they were so skilled with hammers and nails! They created another S.A.L.V.E. sign in big letters and then went on to craft sophisticated designs, quotes, and expressed their creativity. Additionally, because we only had limited amount of hammers, we worked on paper chains so that the Halfway Home gets some more decoration – they have indeed added a vibrant splash of colour!
My week finished with more preparations – laminating, taping things together, wood panel making, researching and further reflecting so that we can spend more time together creatively next week and take final steps to finishing the projects we started.
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