‘Imagine if’ you could be part of a city. A city of people!
Inspired by the Model Room, children were invited to play with Antony Gormley’s concepts.
“Making is a form of physical thinking” – Antony Gormley
I believe that when kids are encouraged to express themselves and take risks in creating art, they develop a sense of innovation, sensitivity and creativity that will be important in their adult lives. Creating is also a question of understanding the others, working and exchanging with them: expressing themselves through making art, makes children open their mind and open up to the others.
“Body as a place / Replacing anatomy with architecture” as the artist described his work; was the starting point of the workshop. Kids were inspired by the Model Room, and then entered a space where the workshop took place. The activity brought cube shaped cardboard papers and pieces of technology. They were also provided a DC Motor, LED’s, a fan and batteries to add to their creation.
“Open-ended exploratory playground in which space and object become interchangeable”
The workshop was open ended. Children were given freedom to choose how they wanted to use the technology provided to make their place exist in the city of people.
After a couple of buildings started to exist in our workshop space, a little exhibition was organized with the artworks. We then projected animations that I previously created on the city. At the end we had this incredible city full of small cardboard people, that reminded us of “Field”, where the Art “looks back at you”.
Giving space and freedom to create and play is a very important event in a child’s life. It puts children in contact with their creativity, which is the basis for any activity within the human life, as Sir Ken Robinson so beautifully pointed:
“Creativity is an essential set of skills and capabilities. It is the capability to have and develop new ideas that are original and of value and to know how that process works. This is a fundamental skill in every field of human endeavor from the arts, the sciences, technology, mathematics to business. It’s really what sets us apart from the rest of life on earth – our capacity to come up with fresh ideas and to make them come into being – to create things in the practical world as well as conceptually.”
Starting from making children get inspired by such interesting (and different) concepts as the Model Room brings, definitely brought curiosity in, which I believe is one of the most noble ‘functions’ of art in our lives.
Here you can read an article I wrote about the workshop for the Institute of Imagination.