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
Thursday, 8 December 2011
UK Visit - Photographs
Coffee with Her Grace The Duchess of Northumberland
at The Alnwick Garden
Project group photo with The Duchess of Northumberland
and Alison Hamer of The Alnwick Garden
The warm hut at the Poison Garden gates
Ulrika and Christer at the Poison Garden gates
Drunken Scarecrow
Searching for workshop materialsin the vegetable gardens
on a windy, cloudy Tuesday
on a windy, cloudy Tuesday
The Treehouse at The Alnwick Garden where we
enjoyed a tasty lunch
Yauad on the rope bridge at
The Treehouse
Simeon at Bamburgh Castle
Enjoying English High Tea at the Copper Kettle, Bamburgh
Please add your own photos!
Headway Arts
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Monday, 1 August 2011
Sweden 2011 - A Headway Journey.
Greetings to you all. Please enjoy the story of our brilliant journey to Sweden in February 2011. Thank you to our hosts for a wonderful experience and best wishes to all our European partners.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
An incredible journey
Many thanks to our wonderful Turkish partners who showed us the very best of Turkey: The important work being done by the voluteers at Begder. The natural home-cooked food (lovingly hand-made breads at the home of Omer). The beautiful historical landscapes at Sagalossos & Burdur. The hard working, generous and warm hearted Turkish people.
Turkish hospitality is long the stuff of legend - and it's all true!!
With the excellent company of our Swedish friends, we had a wonderful memorable experience. In the words of Kris Brown (project learner UK): 'I wish I could feel like this every day' He said he felt his disabilty was not an issue in this suportive and enabling environment. We learned the beautiful art of EBRU and personally I could have meditated amongst it's flowing forms long into the night and plan to run a workshop with our groups here at the earliest possible opportunity. Other great experiences involved meeting family & picking the most gorgeous cherries Ive ever seen, watching the swallows & the trout, meeting the well mannered but eager & excited children of Begder, sharing in the spirituality of the mosque at Burdur and learning more about each others ways over sun dabbled lunches underneath tall pine trees. The soundtrack to this was lots of laughter both nervous and comfortable, the tinkling of spoons in the chai glasses & the spine tingling call to prayer.
I saw the growing confidence and comfort of all our companions and pleasured in sharing in their new experiences (especially those of our learning disabled learners). Having the chance to conceptualise, devise & run a workshop was very special, including exercises led by our learning disabled learners, working with everyone and the co-creation of our artwork on the final morning - all these images that will long stay with me. It was wonderful to feel all of our relationships deepening, language not an issue, finding our feet and our voices; speaking to each other in different languages, somehow understanding! We were of course helped in this by the excellent English of Ahmet and Monica.
So having practically explored our aim of 'co-creation' we began to consider the wider learning outcomes, such as group concentration, cooperation, confidence building and skill sharing and how we might apply what we have learned from each other in different contexts. Fran and I have been working hard to define the Headway working methodology which we have developed over a number of years and of which this workshop was an example.
We also will be lookingat how we can pass on the partnerships learning & collective knowledge to others as European added value. I look forward to deepening our study at the next mobility in the U.K by further identiying our learning outcomes and how we can transfer these to other situations.
England eagerly awaits to welcome you all!!! Until then dear colleagues...
Turkish hospitality is long the stuff of legend - and it's all true!!
With the excellent company of our Swedish friends, we had a wonderful memorable experience. In the words of Kris Brown (project learner UK): 'I wish I could feel like this every day' He said he felt his disabilty was not an issue in this suportive and enabling environment. We learned the beautiful art of EBRU and personally I could have meditated amongst it's flowing forms long into the night and plan to run a workshop with our groups here at the earliest possible opportunity. Other great experiences involved meeting family & picking the most gorgeous cherries Ive ever seen, watching the swallows & the trout, meeting the well mannered but eager & excited children of Begder, sharing in the spirituality of the mosque at Burdur and learning more about each others ways over sun dabbled lunches underneath tall pine trees. The soundtrack to this was lots of laughter both nervous and comfortable, the tinkling of spoons in the chai glasses & the spine tingling call to prayer.
I saw the growing confidence and comfort of all our companions and pleasured in sharing in their new experiences (especially those of our learning disabled learners). Having the chance to conceptualise, devise & run a workshop was very special, including exercises led by our learning disabled learners, working with everyone and the co-creation of our artwork on the final morning - all these images that will long stay with me. It was wonderful to feel all of our relationships deepening, language not an issue, finding our feet and our voices; speaking to each other in different languages, somehow understanding! We were of course helped in this by the excellent English of Ahmet and Monica.
So having practically explored our aim of 'co-creation' we began to consider the wider learning outcomes, such as group concentration, cooperation, confidence building and skill sharing and how we might apply what we have learned from each other in different contexts. Fran and I have been working hard to define the Headway working methodology which we have developed over a number of years and of which this workshop was an example.
We also will be lookingat how we can pass on the partnerships learning & collective knowledge to others as European added value. I look forward to deepening our study at the next mobility in the U.K by further identiying our learning outcomes and how we can transfer these to other situations.
England eagerly awaits to welcome you all!!! Until then dear colleagues...
güle güle,
hejdå vi ses snart
Allie
Alison Walton-Robson
Creative Director
Headway Arts
Creative Director
Headway Arts
Friday, 3 June 2011
Updates
Hello partners.
Please do add responses to the findings of each mobility - this can be in the form of photos, quotes, comments and anything you found you learnt or that was useful to consider.
Coming soon is a slideshow of our excellent Swedish mobility. I hope it will illustrate the co-creative workshop learning and experiences of Swedish culture we all had. I was particularly struck by the flexibility of learning in Sweden, the way the programming at Medlefors acknowledged & closley reflected the needs of the learners, enabling them to learn activley at their own pace. This kind of supportive environment nutures confidence and empowers people, giving them control to direct their own progress, when they feel they are ready to take on more - they can.
Soon we have another mobility in mid July to Burdur in lovley Turkey. Members of The Seven Stars Learning Disabled Theatre Co will be part of the Headway Arts team. All are excited about the next mobility where we will be trying out our co-creative ideas as an international group. Ahmet is arranging a programme of cultural visits in Turkey - Fran & I are looking forward to immersing our selves in the Turkish way of life. I am planning a co-creative workshop for everyone to participate in, which will draw on the tradition of Turkish shadow puppetry, be informed by the sights, sounds and contributions from our international colleagues. Our disabled actors from Seven Stars are looking forward to a chance to share their talents with everyone.
elveda biz türkiye buluşmamıza kadar
best of wishes to you all
Alison Walton-Robson
Please do add responses to the findings of each mobility - this can be in the form of photos, quotes, comments and anything you found you learnt or that was useful to consider.
Coming soon is a slideshow of our excellent Swedish mobility. I hope it will illustrate the co-creative workshop learning and experiences of Swedish culture we all had. I was particularly struck by the flexibility of learning in Sweden, the way the programming at Medlefors acknowledged & closley reflected the needs of the learners, enabling them to learn activley at their own pace. This kind of supportive environment nutures confidence and empowers people, giving them control to direct their own progress, when they feel they are ready to take on more - they can.
Soon we have another mobility in mid July to Burdur in lovley Turkey. Members of The Seven Stars Learning Disabled Theatre Co will be part of the Headway Arts team. All are excited about the next mobility where we will be trying out our co-creative ideas as an international group. Ahmet is arranging a programme of cultural visits in Turkey - Fran & I are looking forward to immersing our selves in the Turkish way of life. I am planning a co-creative workshop for everyone to participate in, which will draw on the tradition of Turkish shadow puppetry, be informed by the sights, sounds and contributions from our international colleagues. Our disabled actors from Seven Stars are looking forward to a chance to share their talents with everyone.
elveda biz türkiye buluşmamıza kadar
best of wishes to you all
Alison Walton-Robson
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Bolognal Conference
We have a great opportunity for disseminating our CoCreART project next month when Alison Walton-Robson will be speaking at a conference in Bologna on April 2nd 2011.
The conference has developed from the idea put forward in our original proposal and will explore the idea of CoCreation and the process of working together towards a common goal, looking more specifically at how this relates to the psyche and how it is used in a therapeutic setting.
The conference has been organised by Guilio Casini who applied to be a partner in the CoCreART project but unfortuantely did not receive the funding to join us. As his organisation specialises in the psychology of dance this will obviously be a focus of the conference but it will be a good opportunity for Allie to disseminate our work and hear about other work that is happening in this field.
Fran
The conference has developed from the idea put forward in our original proposal and will explore the idea of CoCreation and the process of working together towards a common goal, looking more specifically at how this relates to the psyche and how it is used in a therapeutic setting.
The conference has been organised by Guilio Casini who applied to be a partner in the CoCreART project but unfortuantely did not receive the funding to join us. As his organisation specialises in the psychology of dance this will obviously be a focus of the conference but it will be a good opportunity for Allie to disseminate our work and hear about other work that is happening in this field.
Fran
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
OH, Ceuta
How wonderful to remember Ceuta;-)) especially this week, since we have had minus 31 C
You were lucky not to be here this week. The weather was at it´s best when you visited Skelleftea. Most cars "died" on Monday morning because of the cold and so did my husbands car, but not mine :-))
I will try to put some photos here too. Maybe on Sunday because I am very busy until then.
Lots of love to you all from Maggie
You were lucky not to be here this week. The weather was at it´s best when you visited Skelleftea. Most cars "died" on Monday morning because of the cold and so did my husbands car, but not mine :-))
I will try to put some photos here too. Maybe on Sunday because I am very busy until then.
Lots of love to you all from Maggie
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Greetings from Headway Arts (UK)
We have finally put our photos together to tell our story of Headway's excellent trip to Ceuta in October 2010. We wish a Happy New Year to our European partners and we look forward to seeing you all in 2011.
best wishes from us all.
best wishes from us all.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Logo
Hello Everyone
Here is our logo design. I have incorporated imagery from all our drawings made during the logo ideas workshop I ran in Ceuta. There is a star to represent each partner country - the colours are taken from all our flags - on a background of inspirational purple. At the centre is a merging of all the colours which is symbolic for our combined ideas, nationalities and group learning.
I do hope everyone is happy with it.
It was great to meet you all in Ceuta - I think it is a fantastic partnership!
Best wishes
Alison
Alison Walton-Robson
Creative Director
Headway Arts
E:HeadwayT@aol.com
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
About the Project
CoCreART
will explore the concept of 'CoCreation' as a tool for enhancing the participation of disadvantaged adults in Lifelong Learning throughout Europe. The project will explore how this concept is interpreted in the creative working practices of different countries, through visits and practical workshops with disadvantaged groups from partner countries. The project will challenge the preconceptions that surround disadvantaged groups, raise awareness of the contributions they make to the community at local, national and European level. It will also contribute to the acquisition of key competencies for lifelong learning and enhance European co-operation. Partners from UK, Spain, Turkey and Sweden will learn from each other, involve learners at all levels, share ways of working and offer enriched outcomes for disadvantaged learners empowering them to make informed choices about future goals.
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