My colleague Silvija Slaminskienė and I, invited by the Institute of Polish Culture (IKP), have recently participated in a project of culture animation which took place in Gozdowo from the 20th of June to the 1st of July. Vytautas Magnus University, collaborating with IKP, is still trying to prepare the study programme of culture animation, thus every visit of representatives of VMU to any practical workshop is really useful.
In Gozdowo we were trying to raise children’s interest in traditional – or even archaic – photographical methods.
On the first class we did so called "photograms": in the darkroom we had placed various objects on a photosensitive paper and then turned on the light for a moment. After developing the photos we got a photographic "imprint", a shadow, a trace of the objects on paper. At first every kid did his own little photogram in 9×13 format, moving to work in groups to work on bigger things.
The next day we showed them camera obscura – cameras made of cans which we had prepared beforehand. First we took a photo of our whole group standing on the stairs. The suspiction arose that we had hidden a digital camera inside the can, but when we opened the "camera" in the darkroom, the kids saw that there was only a piece of photosensitive paper inside. Then we gave out a few cameras to the children who could start exposing the films all by themselves.
All the photos were shown at the final presentation of the workshop but the two of us were no longer there. A pity.
The workshop has been led by Janek Mencwel and Tomek Kaczor with a great, unconditioned and thoroughly devoted help of Agnieszka Pajączkowska.
For two days, group of the bravest animators collected rubbish of Gozdowo – mostly bottles (glazed and plastic), cans, plastic mugs and much more ☺. It was really interesting experience – what can be found in Gozdowo. Next step was preparing each piece of rubbish – washing and drying. Bottles and cans prepared this way were used as a material for making ‘something from nothing’ – I brought all this staff on the stage and met witch ‘young artists’ ☺. Children used glass-paints, sprays, foils, strings, tacks and made beautiful things – ‘vases’ (coloured bottles), pencil-mugs and… dumb-phone. We had great fun and colorful fingers ☺. Most of coloured bottles were presented on the Magic Island on Sunday.
A film by Pamela Wells, realised with the kind assistance of Bronek Jackowski and all those folk on the playground. Premiered at the ‘Słuchając Gozdowa’ event 1 July, 2007.
For our workshop we needed foil, miles of string and willow. When we were making first kite we were afraid that it wouldn’t fly. After all, it was our debut. But it flew high and Piotrek said that it’s better than scooter. So during next few days we made lot of kites. Some of them flew great, some had little problems with it, but kids never gave up. Eventually they became better experts than we ever were. The best fun was to fly our kites on the playing ground.
Very short action entitled after an old-fashioned polish song. Instructions for use: write down your last dream, put it into a box, treat yourself with an apple. I didn’t expect that apple could be such a lure. Well, it has a long tradition… I gathered a little collection of dreams: beautiful and scary, strange and funny. They are waiting in boxes for continuation.
This shouting workshop was organised by Agnieszka Pajączkowska and Magda Mazur as part of ‘Słuchając Gozdowa’ project, in June.
A lot of activities in Gozdowo seemed to revolve around children. In many ways, these are the easiest group to provide activities for or to involve in activities. I have worked with a lot of community arts projects where playschemes for children and young people – usually under 14 – are poupular ways to engage with a community. Providing creative activities for this age range is a a guaranteed way to win the approval of parents and elders. Some of the most successful activities (in the UK) have worked around a theme of some kind (Treasure Island/Rock’n'Roll Week/Around the World in 80 Days/Hip-Hop Special and so on…); but the point was to use this as a starting point in building a relationship with an existing community group, or an unorganised group of adults.
Bearing this in mind, I discussed with Ania Rogozinska from Katedra Kultury how we might engage with adults in the community. In Gozdowo, the cultural organisations (if we want to describe them in this way) that exist are the school, the church, the library – places where people gather, socialise and interact in various ways. We started with the library and met Pani Ania and talked to her (and her staff) about the activities that the students were undertaking. We had the idea to ask every adult we met (and children) two questions. The first: What is your special talent? (Our definition of this was as broad as possible – cooking, sewing, accounting and so on.) We wrote down the answers and asked if we took take a photograph of the person concerned. The second question was (as asked by Ania): Can you give this English person a Polish word to learn? These were also written down. Both questions prompted a conversation. People took both questions equally seriously, and spent some time considering their answers. Only one person we asked said they did not have a talent, though they later relented and told us when we saw them another time. Pani Halina’s insert real name of librarian talent was ‘lace-making’; one of the cleaners at the school ‘drew and painted small animals’; and so on.
When Brendan Jackson from Laundry and I started talking to kids hanging around the main Gozdowo playground it turned out that there were quite interested in comic strips and would like to participate in a workshop devoted to drawing comics.
They were given materials and first asked to think of a story and to write it down on a piece of paper. The next step was to think of the ways of illustrating the story. The results were quite astonishing: we were bombarded with comics about the great football players from Gozdowo, monsters living on Gozdowo island and gothic stories portraying the town as a ultimate horror location with its neo-Gothic church standing proudly in the very centre.
All the comics were then displayed to the public on the final event, to everyone’s enjoyment.
Piece of news is certainly one of the most simple television forms. Voice over tells the story described by pictures, which do not require complicated cutting. In professional TV channels preparation of a single piece of news takes only a few hours. Children from Gozdowo secondary school needed a few days, but under our guidance they managed to make such TV materials.
This was the idea – children were supposed to create pieces of information interesting for the local community as if there was a local tv channel, which could broadcast the info. Thus children’s first task was to invent the topic. After long discussions we decided to make two materials – one group concentrated on elderly inhabitants of Gozdowo, the other on people with interesting and remarkable passions.
Each group – equipped with a digital camera and a microphone – had to find people to interview and take shots necessary to illustrate their topic. Participants of the workshop who wanted to find out what the perspectives for elderly people in Gozdowo were interviewed a retired teacher and some elderly people in the streets and confronted their opinions with the local authorities (precisely a town mayor). They also took shots of Gozdowo everyday life (e.g. elderly men soaking beer in front of the shop or a retired lady working in the garden).
The other group had to find characters for their story. Eventually they chose people of different age to present that no matter what moment of life you are in it is possible to devote to a creative activity. The newsreel was about two ten-year-old boys drawing cartoons, a local sculptor in his thirties and an elderly horse breeder from Warsaw who settled down near Gozdowo after retiring. In the newsreel they were not only describing their passions but we could also see them at work doing the things they love.
When the shots were ready each group had to write the text of the voice over. After a few discussions and many corrections the texts were ready and one girl from each group had to read it so that we could record it in an “on-air” quality.
The final stage was cutting. The girls (all children who took part in the workshop were girls) knew how their newsreels should look like. For technical reasons and lack of time (it is not possible to teach how to use a complicated cutting programme in one day) girls could not take a big part in the cutting process. But when it was finished the news items were ready to be officially presented in the church’s presbytery. The children invited their families and some other inhabitants of the town. Apart from the two works described above the audience could also watch a short documentary about a boy from local secondary school who specializes in quick completing of the Rubik’s Cube. This film was also made during Gozdowo summer action.
All the works were also shown the next day, during the final presentation of all Gozdowo workshops. Everybody was surprised with the quality of the materials presented and the children could have been really proud.
