Maakfabriek

Today we had the first day of a series of MakeFactory workshops at Poder Joven, a shelter in Barrio Triste in Medellin. During these workshops the children will create an interactive map of the neighborhood accompanied by a downloadable audio tour. On this day we went outside with the kids to identify and investigate remarkable, weird, funny or otherwise interesting spots in their neighborhood. And fun it was! Among one of the treasures was a tree the children knew about with very beautiful bugs. Local knowledge, never published before 😉

At Sol Art cultural center we did two MakeFactory workshops. The first was with children between 10 and 15 years old.

The result from the first group at Sol Art (and scroll down for the second group’s result):

Oh, it was so much fun watching the outcome at the end of the day!

Two days later we did another MakeFactory, at a different location from Sol Art, with younger kids. This time, they were from 5 till 10 years old.

And the result from the second group at Sol Art, with children from 5-10 years old:

Series 2 at Nam Thành Công elementary school.

This time we chose the story of Thach Sanh. A poor but good boy was an orphan but got taken in by a rich lady with a son, Ly Thong. The family took care of Thach Sanh for years and the two boys became good friends. In the village lived a giant snake who demanded a sacrifice every year in the form of a young person. One day it was Ly Thongs turn to be sacrificed, but he demanded Thach Sanh to go in his place. Thach Sanh did this but he killed the snake and returned to his friend with the snake’s head. Ly was scared that Thach Sanh would tell about his cowerdness and locked him in a cave. Ly took the snake head and brought it to the king as if he had killed it himself. The king rewarded him richly. In the meantime Thach Sahn found a princess that was also locked in the same cave after being kidnapped by an eagle. They both escaped from the cave and Thach Sanh was rewarded with a musical instrument by the princesses father who was a god of the sea. Ly fed the princess something to bewitch her voice so she couldn’t speak and tell about his lies. And locked up Thach Sanh again! Now Thach Sanh played music on his instrument to not feel lonely. The melody reached the princess and it broke the spell of her dumbness. She told everything to the king. Tach Sahn was released and the King wanted to punnish Ly but Thach Sahn told the King to let him go.

And the result:

De second workshop in the serie at the High school in Ha Noi was about portrets. First we showed examples of how attributes or clothing can express an imago or a profession. Then the kids made a portret from head to feet of themselves, showing what they would want to be. After the creating everyone explained about their work which was a very interesting group talk! Any idea what this kid would like to be????

MakeFactory at elementary school Hanoi. For this workshop we had only 2 1/2 hours. So we decided to work with a given story. It is an old Vietnamese tale about Gióng (say: zong). The story: one day a sad but good woman that can’t have babies, steps into a giant footprint and magically becomes pregnant. She gives birth to her son Gióng. But when Gióng turns three he is still not able to talk, walk or smile. In the mean time the King is recruiting soldiers from the villages to fight for the country. When a messenger arrives at Gióngs village, he magically starts to speak and asks to be armed. The messenger reports the miracle to the king and the villagers all start to feed Gióng. In just a few days he grows into a giant! The king has an armor and horse specially made for him and Gióng rides of and defeats the enemy.

Explaining how we will work:

Kids at work under Uncle Ho’s supervision:

Checking the first results:

Putting down the story line for the voice-over recording:

And the result! Yippee! :

The assignment in this MakeFactory workshop was to make a ‘tableau vivant’. An acted scene that has suddenly stood still. The students would make pictures of it from different points of view to explore how the composition changes. Some of the kids probably didn’t speak as good English as they said they did…. Only the toilet group understood the plan 🙂 However, some interesting results came out! Recognize the surprise if your plan doesn’t come out the way you intended, is what a teacher once told me.

And finally here is the result of MakeFactory at Field of Dreams boys orphanage. We concluded later that the story, entirely made up by the boys, is a kind of an orphanage story. Also interesting is that it started of as a heroic ninja story but resulted in a complicated family situation and an old lady turns out to be the main character! The ninja’s eventually play no significant role at all. The story: A dragon enters a village and seems to plan the kidnapping of a young woman. Ninja’s attack the dragon in an attempt to save the girl. Then an old lady appears and demands them to stop attacking. We see in a flashback her story: when the old lady was young and pregnant with twins, she accidentally stepped on a dragon egg. The dragon cursed her by turning one of the baby’s into a dragon. The only way to break the curse is for the twin brother and sister to reunite.

Right after the workshop at Field of Dreams, we made a stop motion with the kids from the neighborhood where we lived in, Mintal. They were all kids living below poverty level. Some kids had attended a children’s conference just the day before and were very proud and happy that they were able to attend another interesting event the day after.

Such great Artwork ! Picasso could take an example!

The kids came up with a very adventurous story about gold diggers and robbers and a experimental laboratory!