Recycling materials and cultural heritage
Discovery and Creation of
Migrating Objects
Recommended for
Women and/or children with migrant or refugee background
Duration and phases
4 sessions + a blended part that you can organise in 3 or 4 days
Number of participants
Between 5 and 12 persons
Part 1: Introduction
Objectives
1. Community building and communication
2. Developing vocabulary in local language
3. Creating cultural encounters within an intercultural group
Duration
Between 30 and 60 minutes depending on the number of participants
1. Collect as many kinds of spices as you can coming from as many different regions, countries and cultures as possible. You can also ask participants to bring with them spices they like and that use often.
2. Ask participants to smell each other's spices and try to find out where they come from.
Ask them to tell their name in their own language and repeat its name in the local language.
3. Ask them how they use them or how would they use them, to what other spices, flavors, dishes they could imagine to associate them. You can also ask if they evoke any specific souvenirs and ask to tell them.
4. As a complementary digital exercise, you can also take pictures in macro mode to discover the spices' textures also visually from a different perspective or even by using a tiny microscope.
Learn more about the use of microscope from our tutorial
Part 2 : Discovery
Discovering and appropriating unfamiliar aesthetics
Objectives
1. Discovering artworks issued from a third culture.
2. Getting familiar with public spaces, resolving practical questions such as moving around the city and getting in touch with local people, institutions, etc.
3. Making participants familiar to the use of a museum or an art exhibition
Duration
Between 2 and 4 hours
Materials needed
- Travel tickets
- Museum tickets
- Smartphones
- WhatsApp or Messenger application
1. Find an exhibition showing artwork from divers cultures. The exercise is based on the idea of creating a common ground between local visual culture and the participants' culture of origin through discovering art objects from a third culture, so try to take this into consideration when you choose the exhibition or the museum you propose to visit.
2. Before the exhibition visit, ask the participants to take pictures of intriguing, exciting, strange or unfamiliar details. Photos may be taken of the whole art object or from details only with textures, shaped or colors. You may also ask the participants to take photos of each other while taking pictures of the exhibited objects in order to discover and document each others reactions and feelings towards the artworks.
3. Following the exhibition visit, create a WhatsApp or a Messenger group and ask them to share their photos. Help them with technical issues if they have any. In addition to make participants practicing the use of digital tools, this exercise helps you to find out what kind of art objects they are the most surprised or fascinated by.
Part 3 : Blended workshop
Finding familiar decorative details at home
Objectives
1. Change one's vision about surrounding objects in everyday life
2. Enhancing independent work and improving skills in photo making
3. Improving writing skills
4. Acquire analytical skills
Duration
30 minutes
Materials needed
- Smartphones
- WhatsApp or messenger application
1. As a blended part of the workshop, ask the participants to repeat the exercise of taking photos at home of decorative details that they like. This can also be a familiar objects, a piece of cloth or anything else that they find aesthetic.
2. Ask them to think about what makes these objects familiar or aesthetic for them. To improve writing skills, you can also ask them to note their ideas.
3. Ask them to share their photos with the group through WhatsApp or Messenger.
Part 4 : Discussion
Objectives
1. Finding common features in newly acquired experiences, sharing feelings, sensations and impressions
2. Improving communication skills and self expression
Duration
30 - 60 minutes depending on the number of participants
Materials needed
- Smartphones with previously taken photos
- WhatsApp or messenger application
- Eventually a video projector
1.If you have the necessary technical tools, such as video projector, you can create a virtual exhibition room of the photos taken during the exhibition and at home. This allows participants to see their photos side by side and facilitate to compare colors, patterns or shapes and to share their impressions about each other pictures as well. Otherwise, you can also talk about the pictures by showing them on the participants' mobile phones.
2. Engage them to find common features in the unfamiliar object seen during the exhibition and photos taken at home.
3. Find a common ground, something in the exhibition that they all have appreciated. It can be a specific association of colors, geometric shapes, something unusual still intriguing.
For example, the participants could be intrigued by the surprising use of extremely vivid colors in some popular art or by the unfamiliar way in which familiar topics are represented.
4. This conversation session can be linked to the creative workshop so that learners can find immediate and direct inspiration in what they have just discovered when you launch the creative activity.