Our artistic and educational project, "Artsvit for Kids 2023”, has ended: it was an exciting and rich ten weeks of thorough work, which should be finalized and, most importantly, presented to others. This exhibition features many works: masks, comics, sculptures, various drawings, figures for shadow theater, and even cartoons. They embody the knowledge about art and the world, satisfaction, and joy that the participants of the program received in the process of their creation. But the gallery team and teachers' main task was to allow children to freely fantasize, use their imagination to the maximum, feel like real artists, and simply be children: direct, inquisitive, and happy. We wanted to create a kind of island of safety and childhood where children would find new friends, communicate, play, and have a little banter, thereby distracting them from the fears and stress brought by the war.
We truly believe that art can heal, and not just kids need a pill of creativity. Therefore, this year's program had separate courses for parents and youth for the first time in the project. These classes aim to teach you how to care for yourself and others through creativity. Parents received helpful life hacks, knowledge, and skills: how to establish communication with their child and diversify family everyday life thanks to art, turn an ordinary walk into an exciting adventure, see the beauty in everyday things that remain unnoticed by a concerned eye and show it to the little ones — in a word, remember how interesting see the world through the eyes of children and begin to learn about it together. We allowed young people to express themselves and hear the voices of others, to learn more about how the art community lives and works, and to try themselves as an artist or curator.
As we have already said, the exhibition results from the work of all program participants, respectively, of all courses by age. First, there is a collective children's exhibition of drawings and various art objects, among which there are stills of cartoons. You can view them thanks to augmented reality — with the help of an online application when you point your smartphone at a wall with an animated frame, the picture comes to life.
Also in the exhibition will be drawings created by young people at one of the unique workshops, and their activity will be finalized by one interactive object — a flipchart with questions that the course participants themselves asked and a place for the answers they found in the classes. And visitors can add their thoughts.
From the course for parents at the exhibition, we present to the audience a workbook that summarizes all the topics discussed in the theoretical lectures, namely, the main theses and practical advice on how to gradually, step by step, introduce more and more art into the context of children's lives.
Authors and teachers of the project: Alina Shtefan, Ksenia Romaschenko, Yulia Hryshyna, Oleksandra Shovkun, and Polina Rode-Fuyor.
Desing: Alla Sorochan
WHEN: October 13, 2023, at 6:30 p.m
WHERE: Artsvit gallery, Dnipro, Krutohirnyi Uzviz (Descent), 21A. Entrance through doors from Krutohirnyi Uzviz (Descent)
FREE ENTRANCE
Funded by the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut.
The Stabilisation Fund 2023 for Culture and Education is a project of the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Foreign Office to sustainably strengthen the resilience of cultural and educational partners in Ukraine.
