Last week MME facilitated workshops which helped students develop their own artistic styles by experimenting with lots of different materials in timed drawings. We are using these to encourage freer and more expressive work as there is a tendency to be very restrained and meticulous with their marks. This could be related to the amount of discipline received at school, the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment To Children summarises that in Tanzania,
Government guidelines in 2000 reduced the number of strokes from six to four and stated that only the heads of schools are allowed to administer the punishment, with penalties for teachers who flout these regulations.
However, it seems that there is no accountablity for these flouting teachers, and caning is still common in schools. I met someone yesterday who remembers being caned eighteen times a day because he struggled with mathematics, unsurprisingly he failed the subject.
During the workshop the children experimented with charcoal, inks, oil pastels, pens, crayons and chalks. Each material has its own quality and the children were asked to investigate these and test out as many marks as possible. We then went on to discuss how we can put feelings into our pictures, for example what would a happy person look like? Or a sad person? And how about someone who is angry or scared? We can use many different marks, colours, shapes and sizes to explore these ideas, in the image above a boy at Singachini draws someone who is very sad all in black and another with a big frown on his face.
During the group presentation at the end some very intelligent remarks came out, many of the happy drawings were to do with passing standard seven examinations, you cannot go on to secondary school without these and often families can’t afford to repeat the year. Although primary education is technically ‘free’ many families struggle to find the 70,000 TSH for uniforms, materials and porridge etc. The children identified the colours, facial expressions and body language in their drawings as indicators to particular feelings. There was often a crossover between emotions and one child commented that the girl in the picture was angry because she was sad, others were sad and angry because they had been scolded by the teachers
We will be putting these skills to use in this week’s workshops where each child will be producing their very own self portrait in individual styles and identifying their unique characters, strengths and aspirations.
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