INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

10 SEPTEMBER 2000
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DOING THINGS

Art and Expression: Balancing technique and exploration

Sara Schneckloth, a volunteer at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town, demonstrates the old child and youth care saying that "it doesn't much matter what we do with kids, so long as we do something." Here she shares her recent experience of facilitating a creative art workshop with a group of young people at risk.

I teach the technical aspects of drawing, painting and design to adults from the townships of Cape Town, at the Community Arts Project (CAP). The primary goal at CAP is to create a bridge for further learning and income generation opportunities for aspiring visual and performing artists. The more therapeutic aspects of art-making often get overlooked in the technical approach I take in my class. The mastery of line, value, texture and tone tend to take precedence over emotional exploration. 

However, after my experience running an art workshop at CAP for children and youth organized through the National Association of Child care Workers (NACCW), I have seen anew the therapeutic and empowering value of art making for the individual – testament that creativity needs to be activated and encouraged, channelled and given freedom, and that tools of expression need to be put into young hands sooner rather than later. 

The group consisted of 18 youth at risk, of varied ethnicity, aged 8-18, with minimal previous art experience. The group assembled in the hall at CAP, and each person was given paper and a colour oil pastel. I chose an approach for the workshop that stressed both developing technical awareness as well as leaving room for personal exploration. As a drawing instructor, not an art therapist, I was wary of moving into highly emotional territory with the children, and decided to keep the tone light and to stress the visual language involved in making pictures. 

The first exercise was about making marks – the building blocks of any drawing. Thick, thin, soft, hard, fast, slow, curved, straight, drawing using your favoured hand and the opposite hand. From this collection of lines and shapes, participants were asked to create a picture, adding elements to what was all ready on the page. No limit was placed on what the drawing could be. The point was to create some kind of visual order out of chaos. 

The next exercise went a step further. Everyone wrote their name using varied and creative marks. Then added small drawings of things they liked in and around their names, combining into a singular image. 

Next, we talked about the process of creating a group drawing. Teams were formed and each team had to negotiate how they were going to create a large drawing around the theme of working together. Three very different interpretations emerged, ranging from images of communities and teams to representations of the drawing project itself. The final project was to move from working from the imagination to drawing from life. Everyone chose a partner and did face-to-face portraiture, using the creative marks of the first three exercises. 

Sara, drawn by Riedwaan (17)

At the end of the evening, the gallery space in the hall was filled with colorful, interesting pieces — all very different, all having something to say. When Ruth, the NACCW facilitator, asked participants what they had learned, the answers were quiet but spoke to a process of self-discovery. A young man saying that he now knows that he likes to draw images about nature. A 14-year-old girl realizing that she can make interesting pictures. Looking at the results of our session, I felt proud of the hard work and focus everyone had put forth. The act of making art is more than putting down lines and shapes and colours. It is accessing personal ideas and expressing them visually. I was pleased that everyone wanted to come back and try it again as it was a learning experience for all of us, and my commitment to balancing the technical and the therapeutic in my own teaching work has been renewed because of it.
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Ruth comments: This experience reflected a real need on the part of some of the youth who would like to have their artistic skills acknowledged and for more opportunities to develop their talent further. For most it was their first exposure to such a workshop and to thinking and learning about expressing themselves on paper in very different and creative ways. Some youth struggled to work in a group with persons whom they had never met before while others spontaneously initiated conversation and suggested ideas for their group task.

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In the panel on the left you will find similar brief writings
which you may have missed since your last visit.