RECYCLING STORIES THROUGH ELECTRONIC DEVICES
Refused objects' exploration, mental mapping and animated postcards
Specific objectives
1. Get to know each other
2. Empower self expression using simple objects and materials
3. Discover the creative potential of materials
4. Recycling materials, especially paper and other easy to find materials
Material needed
Newspapers
Overall objectives
1. Developing skills in visual and digital content making and in visual storytelling
2. Rediscovering and reusing skills
3. Awake awareness about environmental protection through recycling materials
- Women and/or children with migrant or refugee background
Recommended for
- any public
Duration
6 hours
1. Ice-breaking with the newspaper statues
Time frame
30 minutes
Tips
- this exercises is ideal for larger groups too, up to 20 participants.
- you will also need a spacious room
- In addition to skills in plastics, it could be useful if the trainer had skills in body expression and theater, in order to animate the presentations and assist the participants in expression
1. With the group, you stand in circle. Each one is given a sheet of newspaper and asked to transform it from two-dimensional to three-dimensional shape.
The sheet can be crumpled, folded, twisted, rolled up ... the possibilities are endless and there are no limits. The only rule is to make it a "sculpture" that can stand up on its own.
After that, each introduces himself to the group through his sculpture, trying to reproduce the shape with his own body and explaining something about himself/herself and why he wanted to transform the sheet in that way.
2. Exploring spaces and objects visiting the Moon Museum of Narrative Objects in Potenza
Specific objectives
1. Crossing a space and getting to know it
2. letting ourselves be inspired by what surrounds us
3. reflecting on objects and the importance they hold in our life
4. approaching storytelling through found objects
5. reflecting on human geography and cultural borders
6. raising consciousness about the added values of cultural diversity recycling visual heritage and personal habits
Material needed
- Selfphones to take pictures
Time frame
60 minutes
Tips
Those who conduct the workshop should have already visited the museum or at least know its history and some of the findings collected inside, in order to be able to give the participants more suggestions and information and stimulate them in experience the space.
Even though the museum is situated in Pontenza, you can probably find interactive museums in you own locality where exploring materials though different senses in possible, such as the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in Paris.
With the group we go through the various display cases of the MOON Museum of Narrative Objects and discover how museum findings are actually things that tell stories.
Later, moving to another room with a free space, we reflect on how museums are places that preserve the memory of a place and a community..
In other words, museums are time capsules built by people for the benefit of people: objects in a museum would be silent without visitors...
Participants to create memories can use mobile phones to take pictures.
During the exhibition visit, we also used the Memorabilia App (the application of the museum) with audio-guide and 3D object reconstruction.
3. Mental maps and heart objects
Specific objectives
1. Enhancing storytelling of one’s own house and habits speaking about emotional objects you preserve or usually use at home
2. Finding creative ways to empower community building and integration
Time frame:
90 minutes
Material needed
Brown paper, white paper, plain colored paper, black paper, photocopy of pins with 5 senses icons, 2 newspapers
After having crossed the rooms of the museum and the objects kept in them, we try to reconstruct a mental map of our home, trying to remember what the spaces and objects of our daily life are like.
This exercise is linked to the practice of the Spontaneous Museum carried out by the host MOON museum, according to which everyone can build their own domestic museum to tell about a specific topic, for example a trip.
We distribute sheets of wrapping brown paper to the participants, approximately A3 size, with colored pencils and markers.
We give each 5 cut-out icons representing the 5 senses.
Everyone will have to draw from memory the plan of their house, focusing on the different rooms and indicating in which room the 5 objects of the heart are located, each linked to one of the 5 senses.
With scissors they then cut out the icons and glue them in the different rooms on the map, describing the chosen object and why it is connected with smell, taste, sight, touch or hearing.
We then share our maps and the 5 objects of the heart with the other participants, telling about our story and our different sensitivities.
Participants are also invited to take pictures or make short videos (max 10”) of the activity watching what their mates are doing.
4. ANIMATED OPTICAL POSTCARDS
creating visual postcards with Notan technique
& animating them with stop motion technique
Specific objectives
1.Enhancing competences in visual perception
2. Recycling materials, especially paper and other easy to find materials
3.Recycling images transforming them into visual optical effect
4. Empowering creative processes and visual education
5 Learning easy and creative techniques to foster self-expression and satisfaction
6. Reworking the techniques to adapt them to one's professional and expressive contexts
7. Enhancing competences in visual documentation of the creative process through photos and videos
8. Acquiring new skills in digital content making
Material needed
CRAFT TOOLS :
- White paper, plain colored paper, black paper
- Scissors
- Stick glue, sticking paste (patafix)
- Pens, pencils
- Rubbers, rulers
- Colored markers
DIGITAL TOOLS:
- Table lamps
- Smartphones
- Stop Motion Studio application
Tips
Who leads the laboratory should have experienced the Notan technique in order to better guide the participants and give any suggestions and cutting solutions. At the same time, the operator should have produced prototypes to show to the participants.
Whoever conducts the workshop should have experienced or at least know the basic criteria of stop motion animation, in order to be able to guide the participants in moving the paper on the table and create a story. The digital application used Stop Motion Studio App, does not require special competence, just download it and install it on your mobile phone.
Both techniques can be learnt from our derails tutorials:
Time frame
3 hours:
90 minutes (post card creation)
+90 minutes (animation)
Each participant chooses one of the five objects indicated previously on the map. The object to be chosen must be simple to draw in the form of a silhouette, that is, it must be recognizable even only by its outline.
They receive a black or other colorful paper, that will be the background, and a smaller white paper (half as big as the colorful one) to cut out from it the outlines of an object.
The figure on the postcard can be created in two ways:
1. with translation, by drawing a very simple figure on the white sheet and cut it out without damaging the paper"waste". In this way from a figure you will get two, one black and one white, one empty and one full, both with the same expressive value
2. with flipping, by drawing only half of a figure on the edge of the black sheet and cut out.
By flipping the cropped half you will get two halves, one white and one black, which put together will make up the whole figure.
We recommend starting from shapes that are very easy to cut out, especially if there are people in the group who have not really understood how the technique works, to allow them to manage the sense of frustration.
The figure must be cut out by following the line and without wasting or damaging both part of the paper, since you will obtain two parts: one “full” and white and one “empty” and black.
Once the tiles have been built, before putting the glue, participants should think about how to animate the image with the stop motion.
We also encourage participants to invent new ways to play with these cards as an excuse to empower storytelling where the figures can suggest characters, scenarios or situations.
These images can be also an opportunity to organize an exhibition where display the postcards and open a debate, illustrated by the figures and animated by caption
Before gluing the cut-out figures on the paper, we invite the participants to think about how to animate them through the stop motion or frame by frame technique, which consists in taking repeated photos of an object by moving it one step at a time.
The sequence of the photos will then give the idea of movement and animation. The object, in this case the cut out paper object, is placed on a black background and under a lamp and moved on the plane with small steps: the mobile phone is placed on a support that always holds it in the same position and takes a picture in single frames/movement.
Then, thanks to the Stop Motion Studio App installed in your phone, the series of frames is reproduced as a continuous sequence and the illusion of movement is created. To have the illusion of movement, minimum 10pictures/sec should be taken.
Check out Mariangela Tolve's video description about Il Salone des Rifituati's local workshop in Potenza: