In the month of May 2020, The Happiness Factory approached me for a collaboration to conduct an online art workshop and I immediately said YES!
Having conducted art workshops for kids at schools and orphanages previously, I very much enjoy the process of research, planning and execution of a workshop. Only this time, the challenge was it was for people of all age groups (mostly) and it was to be conducted online. However workshops are an amazing experience, not only do we get an opportunity to share all our learning and findings but we get a chance to learn a lot more in the process of putting together the workshop and interacting with our audience at the workshop.
Pooja Sitharthan (The brains and heart of The Happiness Factory Store) helped me with concept exploration, tips, suggestions and gave constructive feedback throughout the journey. We had a fun learning experience in curating this workshop.
What was the workshop about? Being a junk artist by passion, the workshop we planned was mainly aimed at learning the techniques and designing art with trash found at home and to highlight the importance of recycling.
One of the major challenges we faced when working on online workshop is the constraint on materials. Especially with the current pandemic and the lock downs imposed in the states, we can't expect the participants to have the materials at home that we need them to have (this includes very basic things like fevi kwik, colored paper or even paints) neither can they step out to buy these materials. But this being a recycling workshop, we rose to the challenge enthusiastically by finding common and easily accessible materials to work with.
For the first workshop, we focused mainly on recycling plastics -especially plastic food containers. Plastics have such a versatile property and that is the main reason we see so many different kind of things around us made with plastics. This same property comes handy when we make art with plastic trash. Reusing and recycling plastic extends the lifetime of the plastic in use and reduces the demand for new plastic at the production stage. Tiny steps move us forward to embark greater journeys. So this workshop was aimed for (but not restricting to) beginners, to encourage them to start their small steps in the recycling journey.
Diving deeper into the workshop
The one and half hour workshop session was split into four segments. In the first segment, we discussed plastics and why to recycle them. It included a presentation, where I traced the techniques explored with plastics by various artists around the world who are working on plastic trash to create awareness about the environmental concerns associated with it.
In the rest of the workshop session, we worked on three DIY activities.
1) Basic exercise to get familiar with the material
Here we learnt how to cut and paste plastic and the easy process of making a badge. We also explored pattern making. At every stage, for better understanding templates and samples were provided to follow and extended application of the same technique to create other products was shown and discussed.
2) Advancing to characters and elements exploration
From basic shapes and patterns we proceeded to making characters and elements. These could later be layered or composed to create stand alone pieces that could be used to decorate pen stands, planters, boxes or even to create a mixed media art piece.
3) Interesting techniques to convert plastic spoons into 3D insects
We learnt to transform plastic spoons into wings and to add textures and details it to make a 3D insect. All the 3 activities were easy for the participants to follow as i worked and made these along with them in the live session.
With that the workshop was concluded with positive feedback from those who attended.
Some Highlights of the workshop: 1) Free digital workbook mailed after the session
2) Special background setup made from plastic trash from the workshop
3) We run test workshops before the actual one to have a check on everything.. practice practice practice..
It was an enriching learning experience for me. There was the initial fear that we have when doing something for the first time but the same has given me confidence to prepare and keep doing better in the upcoming workshops. I thank the happiness factory for giving me this opportunity and helping me throughout the process. Thanks to my friends who helped me greatly in the initial concept ideation stage and to my family who supported and helped me with the workshop setup. And to the people who attended my workshop, thanks for being a lovely bunch of fun,interactive and enthusiastic learners! Hoping to learn and contribute more in this area of conducting exciting art workshops. So until the next one, Cheers!
Check out my upcoming workshops in the link below: