And our time at Gozdowo culminated on a sunny Sunday.
[mygal=gozdo_ulotki_new]
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Category Archives: Gozdowo
Gozdowo Scrapbook
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.
Gozdowo City – comic workshops in Gozdowo
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.
Gozdowo TV
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.
Exploring Gozdowo
A group of individuals, with diverse skills and experience, descended
on Gozdowo in June to both enjoy the hospitality of Dom Wiktorscy and engage with local people. Gozdowo is a village of around 1000 inhabitants near to Płock and Sierpc.
Gozdowo Design!
Three days of drawing, creating, planning, drafting, cutting out…
The great world of design became open and absorbed us totally.
It isn’t so easy to produce logo or to create a pattern, but the view of planty of original designed t-shirts fluttering in the wind in the center of the park gives an increadible impression and let to think that everything is possible for young artists from Gozdowo!
Design as a subject of workshops seems to be a great bag with possibilities: logo, poster, t-shirts, stencil – it is only a beggining.
Spectrum is extremely wide and unlimited: from slogan to gadget, from postcard to instalation!
So – I’m waiting for the next part!
[mygal=design]
Warm up trip to Gozdowo
Two days of hanging around, catching up and testing first ideas.
Gozdowo CCTV
Beware, you are under control 
To all coming to Gozdowo – stay temperd – no shrimping in public places, no nudity, no sex and violence, no politics, open fires and all the qool things that define cultural animation!
There are cameras watching
Local Activity. Inspirations.
That were two very busy days of workshops. First day we were getting to know each other and looking for as many inspirations as it possible. We started with presentation of Laundry and ę. Then we have 3 meeting on different subjects: Marta Wójcicka form Studio Teatralne Koło was presenting her experience with organizing animation events in post industrial space like PZO on Praga. Her speech was very energetic and one of most interesting message was the question of personal imperative. “You have to believe that your project is good otherwise you would not find partners and sponsors”. Beata Jaszczak from Farbiarnia ( Płock) presented the methods of work with young kids from the backyard. She gave many examples of how to keep children interested in our work and how to make them authors of their own activities. Last but not least Beata Tokarz from Akademia Rozwoju Filantropii w Polsce make a presentation on seniors problems in Poland. She gave a bunch of information on seniors: what are their main problems and needs. She also shown us examples of polish and European good practice in this issue. We finish first day on the film show in Skład Butelek. Completely tired but (I guess) full of ideas.
The second day started with active workshop “first contact” run by Pamela Wells and Brendan Jackson form the Laundry. Everybody had a chance to do “1 euroJ” project and start the interaction with strangers on the streets. We had 5 interesting ideas of how to make a first contact and what can come out of it….
The very last part “generator of ideas” run by Marta Białek and Piotr Stasik from ę showed up the creativity of all participants. More then 30 ideas for project has appeared! And slowly, slowly there were changing into project…It seems there is a lot of work in front of us and a lot of fun I hope. Pleas feel free to leave any comments on our workshop……… Continue reading
Fearlessness
A long long time ago, in a universe far far away, I was a student. I struggled a lot with my teachers but they were fabulous enough to allow this. They put up with my constant questioning, my constant challenging, my constant misbehaviour. One day, one of the other students came up to me and said, “I was having a tutorial with Tony and he said I should talk to you about safety nets.” I said, “What?” Continue reading