#10-Art Word of the Week: Elaboration

For this last blog entry, the art word of the week is elaboration.  Shirrmacher and Fox (2009) define elaboration as “thinking that is detailed” (p.365).  As simple as this definition is, the applications are endless.  Along with my group members Alesia, Natasha, Sami and Zoe, we were able to come together and elaborate our thoughts on our topic of choice: child soldiers in Africa.

We choose to focus on a serious problem in Africa because it is an issue we were all passionate about.  Although Africa is thousands of miles away, you cannot help but feel connected to those that are experiencing such terrible situations in their daily lives.  The fact that children are taken away from their families and forced into such horrific conditions is absolutely devastating.  Their innocence and freedom is being unjustly stolen from them, which is what drove us to focus on child soldiers in Africa.  We came up with a non-profit organization called Young Minds in the Know...Children Caring 4 Children.

Our BIG IDEA is to get children involved in being educated about what is happening in Africa, particularly in Uganda.  We wanted to demonstrate to our classmates that children are completely capable of understanding issues in a global context.  Children are our future and our big idea was to show how educating them is not only showing respect for their ability to learn, but also valuing their importance for the future.

Our primary avenue of including arts into our BIG IDEA was to create a child friendly video.  Visual images compiled into a short film is a great was to get children interested in what is happening to these children in Africa.  Our goal was to make the footage nongraphic and visually stimulating for young children to watch.  We also made a point to ask children in community centres and schools to create drawings of how they view child soldiers in Africa using paint, drawings or even collages. The artwork that would be made by these children would be completely amazing, because every individual has their own interpretations and expressions of how they view this issue.

We contacted many stakeholders to assist us in our ultimate goal, which was to travel to Uganda and film our video.   Invisible Children and the Uganda Orphans Fund were out primary supporters, and we arranged to stay at the orphanage free of charge where we would only have to pay for our daily food costs.  We also contacted students in the Radio and Television Arts program at Ryerson University to assist us in the filming process.  For our fundraiser, we reached out to many stakeholders including, musicians, food suppliers, a chef and more!

Our goal was to promote this fundraiser using social networking sites as well as posters around the community, in addition to word of mouth.  We will persuade the community to help us in raising funds to go to Uganda by showing them how much we value and respect the education of children.

I think our presentation went extremely well! My group members and I worked very hard to convey how excited we were about our BIG IDEA.  I think our audience was really interested in what we had to say, and were particularly interested in our tokens, which were army soldiers painted white with our logo attached to it.  The white represented the innocence of children and when people look at their token at another point in time, they will be reminded of child soldiers in Africa, and also of the fact that educating children in our own communities is so significant.

I think that we could have explained a bit more about what we meant about a "child friendly video" to our audience since they would have had a better idea on what we had envisioned.

Educators:

Showing children you respect their intelligence and compassion is necessary to get them involved in their community.  If children are given a chance to make a difference in the world, they will! They just need to be given that chance. Do not be afraid to provide children with a breadth of knowledge, just make sure it is appropriate, sensitive and above all, meaningful.

#9- Art Word of the Week: Originality

This week’s art word is originality.  According to Shirrmacher and Fox (2009), originality refers to “thinking that is unique and unusual”(p. 367).  I think that this term is quite reflective of the art activity related to this blog entry, because I needed to put on my creative thinking cap and come up with an original idea.  

Guerilla Art.  Before this phenomenon was explained to me, I had literally no idea what it meant.  Once the concept was a bit clearer, the wheels in my mind began turning.  When I was younger, I absolutely loved creating characters out of different materials.  One of my FAVOURITE characters to make was fish. Red, blue sparkly or striped fish, you name it, I made it.  Perhaps I loved making these artistic fish creations was because I’ve been fishing with my dad so many times.  The excitement of catching a fish and marveling at how much effort you took to reel it in is completely exhilarating.  That is why I decided to create a fish character that I could place around various areas in downtown Toronto. 

Watching people’s reactions was priceless! So many people were looking at this peculiar fish and wondering why/who/when it was put there. What made the fish even more intriguing was the fact that there was a message attached to it. What I found most striking about people checking the fish out was the fact that no one stopped for a long period of time, which is why it was so hard to take a picture!  I think that if I had put the fish around my hometown of Mississauga, I would have gotten better reactions because people would have taken more time to look at the fish.  





Embarking on this Guerilla Art activity was a great way to bring out my originality.  I'm not sure what I had more fun doing, making the fish or putting it in places for people to see!  The message was meant to make people think about taking a risk and going outside their comfort zone.  Take the plunge-swim with the fish!

Educators:

An idea like Guerilla Art would truly bring out amazing originality among children. They would be so excited to go around places and leave pieces of artwork for other people to find.  This would be a great field trip activity to do as a class!