Monthly Archives: February 2012

February 6, 2012 · 1:47 pm

Ever wondered what a Tanzanian art lesson looks like?

This is P.1 of the curriculum for Arts, Crafts and Social Studies (Stadi za Kazi) It offers a really interesting insight into how the creative curriculum is delivered here in Tanzanian primary schools.

The art of drawings, shapes and decorations

Questions

  • Why do people make decorations on clothes?
  • How do theyd decorate them?
  • Which type of clothes do you know which are decorated by using different fabrics?

Decorations of Clothes: decorating clothes is artistic and you can decorate them with different patterns.

Group work: in your groups discuss the names of the plants which can be used to produce colours and paint with

Ways of decorating clothes

Group work: Discuss different ways of decorating clothes that you know

There are ways which are used to decorate clothes some of these are Batik.

Why do we decorate? – to decorate clothes you need to be creative.

  1. To make clothes look attractive
  2. To add value to the cloth and the fabric
  3. Using colour and patterns to meet the needs of certain events.  For example, independence day, or the union day between Tanzania and Zanzibar.

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February 3, 2012 · 6:54 am

Tengeneza Sanaa, Kujijgenga

After successfully translating Making Art, Making Me into Swahili – Tengeneza Sanaa, Kujijgenga (meaning to grow and develop as persons through creativity) we met with the head teachers and some of the pupils from Mgungani, Singachini and Kibo primary schools.  They all loved our proposal and we are delighted to announce that we will be working with 60 of their students over the next two months!

The semi rural Mgungani primary school currently dont have a teacher to deliver their Arts and Crafts lessons so we will be involving their teachers in our Tuesday afternoon workshops, they wanted us to start right away!

More good news is that Kibo school in urban Moshi have kindly offered to host our exhibition in March, they have already started talking about inviting government officials and local education officers. From what we gather from Mrs Sunguya, MME is in line with the government ambition for teachers to help children creatively find their own voices, moving away from a taught or ‘forced’ opinion and to develop and express their own.

In section 4.1 of the Tanzanian Development Vision 2025 creativity is recognised as strategic change agent.

Education should be treated as a strategic agent for mindset transformation and for the creation of a well educated nation, sufficiently equipped with the knowledge needed to competently and competitively solve the development challenges which face the nation. In this light, the education system should be restructured and transformed qualitatively with a focus on promoting creativity and problem solving.

It looks like we are on the right track!

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