Guess who's suddenly an art teacher?
Much to my delight, I was invited to meet with The Young Stracke All-Stars on Sunday to lead a workshop involving collage. The YSA's are a group of motivated and dedicated 9-13 year old musicians led by motivated and dedicated teacher and musician, Jason McInnes.
To get the creativity flowing from the get go, I brought along the collaborative collage that has graced the walls of the c-a-d 6 month and 12 month celebrations. The YSA's dove right in a-cuttin' and a-pastin'.
The YSA's alternately engaged in collagery, and, under Jason's gentle and empowering guidance, moved chairs, set up tables, and generally took ownership of the gathering.
We came together around the table. Each participant showed bravery, leadership, and support by rating their day from 1-10, describing why s/he chose that number, choosing the next speaker, and listening. Then I led a brief meditation on "Your Unique Creativity". We each got to make a collage based on the experience. The All-stars' task was to decorate folders for keeping their music and papers organized. Here is the gang at play.
We cleaned up, displayed our work, and took a walk around the table to view each piece. We had a few minutes to share our experience and talk about our work. I forgot to photograph the finished pieces! But here is a scan of "my unique creativity". One word that came up to describe my creativity during my visualization was "dynamic".
And here is the on-going collaborative collage in it's latest incarnation. There is scarcely room to add on to it.
Finally, I like to have participants list adjectives to describe their states of being as they contribute to the collaborative collage. The Young Stracke All-Stars described their states of being thusly: excited, happy, attentive, sugary, thirsty.
