Children, Art and Ecuadorian Cloudforest
In many cities and regions of the southern hemisphere child labour is still a widespread phenomenon. This also goes for Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. Cultural offers that facilitate an age-appropriate development of street children, however, are scarce. The non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation bambúProjekt e.V. intents through artistic workshops to develop a space in which the street children can express their creativity and further their development. The organisation was founded in 2007 and is sustained by seven volunteers in Germany and another four in Ecuador.
The workshops of bambúProjekt take place in a finca in the Ecuadorian cloud forests. The flora and fauna of these forests have increasingly come to suffer under illegal deforestation and the construction of oil pipelines, due to which bambúProjekt often incorporates environmental themes into its work with the children. By organising larger-scale exhibitions the organisation wishes to call public attention to the often precarious situation of the street children.
–> Interested artists for workshops in 2012!
bambúProjekt e.V. has been admitted into the ASA-programme 2012 of the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ)
The ASA participants will plan and conduct artistic workshops, where they will emphasise the theme of interaction with nature. At the end they will present the results of the workshops in the form of an exhibition in Quito. The participants should encourage the children to express their relation to nature, as well as other life experience, through painting, photography or other artistic forms. Already before their departure the participants will formulate a tentative plan for the workshop, which they will carry out in Ecuador with a group of five to six children between nine and 14 years old. This proposal for a workshop will then be discussed with the responsible for the bambúProjekt in Germany. Once in Ecuador the participants will accomplish the last preparations after which they carry out the workshops over a course of five to six weekends. At the end of the workshop they will curate and organize the exhibition in Quito.
For these tasks the ASA participant should have accumulated some experience from working with children previously as well as from the artistic area and with exhibition planning. Pedagogic background knowledge and acquaintance with presentation methods are an advantage. The project calls for a great deal of self-initiative in addition to motivation and time – already before leaving the country of departure – in order to prepare the workshop.
The project will take place from August to October 2012.
The program catalogue and the application forms will be available online as of November 10th: http://www.asa-programm.de/programm
