Friday, 20 July 2012
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Monday, 2 April 2012
Dear cocreart partners,
We have carried out some activities recently within the project. I would like you to know about them. Thanks in advance for your interest.
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| Sandıklı SPA center |
1.Trip to the thermal spring Sandıklı - Afyon.The reason why we have organised such a trip was to develop the unity and solidarity among our members and to let them know more about cocreart.
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| Cocreart corner |
2. No doubt the last Burdur visit has increased the awareness of cocreart here in Burdur.Apart from the cultural and touristic places and authority visits we have done two succesful workshops. I think to exhibit what had been created during the workshops was a good idea to let our members especially pupils know.Thus we have arranged a safe place for exhibition.
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| during the course |
3. As you know we have organised English course. for our learners before. Although we couldn't able to collect more of them and teach English except some sentences , we have launched another one for our younger leraners who are working as teachers. It seems as if it is will work but we will it in time.
The Grundtvig Specialist; Hakkı Bilgen's visit
Our project had long been under inspection of the Turkish National Agency. for a long time. One of the Grundtvig authority was going to accompany us during the England mobilty, but due to some reasons he didn't manage. Last friday we welcomed one of the Grundtvig specialist "Hakkı Bilgen".
Wish he had visited us earlier. He has checked what has been done as project work so far. The inspection report will soon be sent to us. We are looking forward to seeing it .Meantime he compliment on the project documentation and also some of the works and the project itself. We are honored to have been a participant of the project "cocreart".
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
THE FIFTH MEETING OF THE GRUNDTVIG PROJECT "COCREART"
The fifth meeting took place in our town Burdur. Participants from Sweden and Spain total number 13 met on February 25 - 30 in 2012
As a member of the hosting organisation we were very honored and delighted to have welcomed our partners.
We feel ourselves much more familiar with the project aims day by day. I hope we could have shown this during the visit. We tried to prepare a busy meeting program within the aims and targets of the project idea.
We knew that our participants would like to see some ordinar schools, so we took them to different primary school as well as the public education centers.
Cocreat partners participated in two different workshop and created three differents works including
ebru, printing press and a collage work with the inspiration of peace and brotherhood.
Besides,they met with the mayor and the director of national education.
You can reach all the documents prepared for the meeting.Thank you very much for your interest. I will keep on sending.
Here is the link for the video. http://youtu.be/-ZTp-ZXdCd8
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Headway Arts Workshop Methodology
You could say in principle 'Cocreation' is something people do everyday - we make things with others - meals with our families, plans with our colleagues, products with our clients - but we don't always conciously focus on how this benefits our relationships, our confidence in dealing with situations or identify what we have learned from the experience.
When the idea of exploring our work as 'Cocreation' first emerged we looked at the many meanings of this term and how it applied in eclectic settings. During the writing of what was to become our 'CocreART' project bid, after much thought & discussion, Fran then boiled down all our ideas into a definition: 'working together toward a common creative goal'.
During the UKCocreART Mobility December 2011 the project required us to continue to our exploration of Cocreation. Using the medium of visual arts I devised and led a workshop which would enable this 'working together towards a common goal'. I invited learners to cocreate an artwork inspired by the collective experiences had during our UK mobility. My thinking was that we could collect 'found materials'. Items or momentos of our travel and incoporate these into a finished artwork - an example of 'cocreation' and an image reflecting our collective experience. This process was begun during UKWorkshop 1 on the first day of the mobility where we collected items from The Alnwick Garden and Banburgh beach.
During UKWorkshop 2 I offered to the group a large blank canvas and in supplement to found items, a collection of simple accessible (not difficult to use) collage materials all relating to experiences so far (e.g. materials used in costumes seen earlier in the programme and collected together by Chris). I also offered the idea that as a starting point and unifying theme we might use the symbol of a hand inspired by our project logo, as this image had already been cocreated in a previous workshop. Again this is an accessible image. It is a meaningful, recognisable, symbolic, architypal image, universal to all peoples. They could choose/choose not to use these materials/ideas. It is important that there is freedom to creative thinking. The group might have come up with something totally different but equaly as valuable and relevant. To dismiss ideas without exploration or group negotiation would be to loose the sense of creative freedom, spirit of cooperation and environment of exploration. If members of the group had wanted the work to go a completely different way then it would have been good working practice for me as facilitator to explore that path and negotiate it's inclusion within the collective thinking.
The learner group was made up of our project management group, international learners from all partners countries including learning disabled delegates. I felt it was important that not only did we all work together towards a common creative goal but that we also worked in Equality. Ideally we would have all worked closely together around 1 table - but with a group of 35 this was impractical! No Distinction was made between staff and students/group members, age, abilities or status, we worked on tables which also mixed up the nationalities. So thus:
Within the positive and safe space of this cocreation people are free to open their minds to learn, relax, experiment and escape expectations, preconceptions, judgements.
When it was time for UK Workshop 3. The final presentation. Once everyone had worked on the pieces, trying out different materials, having time to reflect over their experiences, creating imagery symbolic to them, sharing thoughts with the rest of the group, contributing their piece of the collective collage. I invited people to arrange them on the canvas in a place of their choosing - thus cocreating the whole, final presentation 'CocreART'. This happened with an easy relaxed process which I believe showed the cooperative spirit we have all worked to develop within the group. We were in a state of relaxed cocreation, happy to give and take, to offer and recieve, without lots of facilitation neccessary and people organised the collage carefully together. There was no akward negotiation needed everyone was happy with the finished placings. My job as workshop director/facilitator was made very easy by an excellent and cooperative group of learners.
So in summation, our 'Cocreative' methodology here at Headway Arts is explored somewhat above. I hope we offered a workshop programme which met the project objectives and reflected the collective learning somewhat - symbolically through visual art.
Other workshop learning outcomes which could be discussed further:
Please do post responses, questions, quotes, any commentary or feedback. We will also need this for our final reporting!
Now somethinkg to think about for ~Turkey: The next step is comparing our practices - now we have seen how partners are working, what practical things have we learnt?
I'll leave you with that one!
.....Farewell for now dear partners
Alison Walton-Robson
Creative Director
When the idea of exploring our work as 'Cocreation' first emerged we looked at the many meanings of this term and how it applied in eclectic settings. During the writing of what was to become our 'CocreART' project bid, after much thought & discussion, Fran then boiled down all our ideas into a definition: 'working together toward a common creative goal'.
During the UKCocreART Mobility December 2011 the project required us to continue to our exploration of Cocreation. Using the medium of visual arts I devised and led a workshop which would enable this 'working together towards a common goal'. I invited learners to cocreate an artwork inspired by the collective experiences had during our UK mobility. My thinking was that we could collect 'found materials'. Items or momentos of our travel and incoporate these into a finished artwork - an example of 'cocreation' and an image reflecting our collective experience. This process was begun during UKWorkshop 1 on the first day of the mobility where we collected items from The Alnwick Garden and Banburgh beach.
During UKWorkshop 2 I offered to the group a large blank canvas and in supplement to found items, a collection of simple accessible (not difficult to use) collage materials all relating to experiences so far (e.g. materials used in costumes seen earlier in the programme and collected together by Chris). I also offered the idea that as a starting point and unifying theme we might use the symbol of a hand inspired by our project logo, as this image had already been cocreated in a previous workshop. Again this is an accessible image. It is a meaningful, recognisable, symbolic, architypal image, universal to all peoples. They could choose/choose not to use these materials/ideas. It is important that there is freedom to creative thinking. The group might have come up with something totally different but equaly as valuable and relevant. To dismiss ideas without exploration or group negotiation would be to loose the sense of creative freedom, spirit of cooperation and environment of exploration. If members of the group had wanted the work to go a completely different way then it would have been good working practice for me as facilitator to explore that path and negotiate it's inclusion within the collective thinking.
The learner group was made up of our project management group, international learners from all partners countries including learning disabled delegates. I felt it was important that not only did we all work together towards a common creative goal but that we also worked in Equality. Ideally we would have all worked closely together around 1 table - but with a group of 35 this was impractical! No Distinction was made between staff and students/group members, age, abilities or status, we worked on tables which also mixed up the nationalities. So thus:
No heirarcy
All are learners
All are equal
All are respected
All contibutions are valued
All can learn from each other
All are in Cocreation
When it was time for UK Workshop 3. The final presentation. Once everyone had worked on the pieces, trying out different materials, having time to reflect over their experiences, creating imagery symbolic to them, sharing thoughts with the rest of the group, contributing their piece of the collective collage. I invited people to arrange them on the canvas in a place of their choosing - thus cocreating the whole, final presentation 'CocreART'. This happened with an easy relaxed process which I believe showed the cooperative spirit we have all worked to develop within the group. We were in a state of relaxed cocreation, happy to give and take, to offer and recieve, without lots of facilitation neccessary and people organised the collage carefully together. There was no akward negotiation needed everyone was happy with the finished placings. My job as workshop director/facilitator was made very easy by an excellent and cooperative group of learners.
So in summation, our 'Cocreative' methodology here at Headway Arts is explored somewhat above. I hope we offered a workshop programme which met the project objectives and reflected the collective learning somewhat - symbolically through visual art.
Other workshop learning outcomes which could be discussed further:
- cocreated artwork - marked the learning journey through symbology, a cocreative process & product
- furthered european understanding - low focus communication with different nationalities of all backgrounds
- social inclusion - international socially inclusive lifelong learning during workshop
- confidence & communication - meeting & understanding new people and exchange of different culture, ideas and active learning,
- different practices & openmindedness - to new methodology & alternative ways of learning, both high and low focus or 'by product'
- creative thinking - what it brings to learning methods
Please do post responses, questions, quotes, any commentary or feedback. We will also need this for our final reporting!
Now somethinkg to think about for ~Turkey: The next step is comparing our practices - now we have seen how partners are working, what practical things have we learnt?
I'll leave you with that one!
.....Farewell for now dear partners
Allie
Alison Walton-Robson
Creative Director
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