Street Art for Change with Splattervan: Masterclass Toolkit

CREATIVITY & CHANGE Masterclass Toolkit: Street Art for Change

Creativity & Change Creativity & Change is based in CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, in the Department of Arts in Health and Community Practice and is supported by Irish Aid. Our programmes target change-makers, educators, activists, artists, community workers, adult educators, youth workers, volunteers and anyone who is interested in how creative engagement can nurture global citizenship and empathic action around local and global justice themes.

In the Creativity & Change programme, we believe that creative engagement can support transformative learning experiences that connect the head, hand and heart and nurture the competences of global citizens that are important for the sustainable future of our world. Competences such as empathy, resilience, critical thinking, problem solving, ability to take action and compassion are developed during our trainings through hands on, peer-led approaches and stimulating learning environments.

Our training opportunities bring creative methodologies and energy to Global Citizenship/Development Education.

We deliver a part-time, level9 award, as well as an annual international training course for youth workers, a ‘Creative Fair’ interactive roadshow and a rich, varied masterclass programme.

Creativity and Change masterclasses provide an opportunity for inspirational, intensive and in-depth engagement with focused creative learning methods in two day intensive workshops. Delivered by facilitators with specific expertise and experience, the programme is designed around identified gaps and expressed interest and needs of practitioners. Masterclasses look at specific topics connected to change-making, global citizenship and justice themes and specific methods, for example: Design Thinking in creating learning environments for global citizenship education Creative Tools to facilitate meaningful dialogue for change-making Stop-motion, a tool for global justice awareness raising Urban/ Street art. Bringing global justice messages to the street Theatre tools for transformative learning and empowering expression of global citizens through creative writing

t r A t e e r St

with

Splattervan “Now, more than ever, we need to support our young people to engage with their communities and nurture their creativity and critical thinking skills. in our rapidly changing world, it is essential that we provide a space for young people to have their voices heard and shared.�

Splattervan Splattervan is a team of two youth arts workers - Claire Coughlan and Helen O’ Keeffe, who aim to inspire young people to ‘drive change’, by travelling around the country to work with young people in youth and community groups, schools and non-profit organisations.

Splattervan uses graffiti, street art and animation to nurture young people’s creative sides, with particular focus on young people at risk, those who may not have been well served by the education system, young people in care and young asylum-seekers.

Using spray paint, stencils and creative, collaborative activities, participants at Splattervan workshops make meaningful and engaging art pieces. Anything can become a canvas, from found materials to walls...and even the Splattervan itself.

The girls aim to empower the people they work with by providing them with a visual platform from which to express themselves and share their ideas and opinions. Their mission is to promote inclusion, empathy, individuality, self-determination and active, global citizenship through the work that they do.

Through expressing themselves, young people begin to become active citizens and change-makers, and the artwork they create lives on to engage others. Through engaging with their creativity, young people realise they can make a difference in the world, both for themselves and for others.

Splattervan are passionate about the potential of young people and the power of art as a catalyst for personal, social and global change. www.facebook.com/splattervan

masterclass OVERVIEW For the workshop, participants were invited into a visual, interactive workspace, with space to brainstorm on walls, a reading corner with books about street art, creative activism and Creativity & Change projects and lots of materials to explore and experiment with.

They were guided through a learning process from an introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) - from which to explore issues for action - through ideas-generation, concept, colour and design to the creation of a collaborative 8ft x 12ft portable street art piece.

The group looked at the power of street art as a catalyst for both local and global social change, both and explored the possibilities offered by social media networks to find further audiences for their art - to widen the potential reach of their message about social justice and children’s rights.

Street art for change Street Art for Change aimed to give learners a new perspective on street art and the potential of public space for expression and engagment with local and global justice themes.

street artists Participants were introduced to local and international examples of socially-engaged street artists, including JR, Shepard Fairy, Banksy, Funarte, Boa Mistura, Mark Jenkins, Joe Caslin and Maser.

collaboaration The group learned how to collaboratively generate ideas and to turn concepts into powerful statements to express to the public. They explored tools and creative activities that make global justice issues accessible and engaging for themselves and the groups they work with.

resources to explore and generate discussion around global citizenship Common Cause Handbook UNCRC SDGS 80 : 20 (See Resources and Reading page for links)

compostion From here, the group explored ways of bringing their ideas into composition, using photographs of themselves to generate impactful images to add to their statements.

Theatre of the oppressed Facilitators used theatre methods adapted from Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed”. Particpants created scenes or still-frames, which were photographed and into stencils.

creation

stencil making Free fonts for text www.dafont.com

On day two, participants learned how draw and cut out stencils of both text and images. They looked at the use of defined colour palettes and simple ways to produce effective mural backgrounds.

To create stencil images Use Photoshop’s Threshold function to turn any photograph into a black & white stencil-style image that can be printed and cut or projected, traced and cut using a computer, projector, blade and card

Colour palettes

paste-ups Printed images can be pasted to a surface using pva glue. rasterbator.net is a great tool for enlarging images to print and use as ‘paste-ups’.

Adobe Kuler: https://color.adobe.com instagram: @moviecolorpalette @colorpalette.cinema

Backgrounds Mixed media, such as: paint nature masking tape net curtains

care The group familiarised themselves with safety requirements of using spray paint.

They also discussed the envirionmental implications of working with spray paint and looked at more eco-friendly alternatives.

safety toolkit Ventilated Masks Gloves Eye goggles Spraypainting must be done outdoors or in a very well ventilated area.

TIPS Watch out for the wind. Spray paint becomes airborne once sprayed and can travel.

When spray painting, make sure your nozzle is not too close or far away from the surface.

Pressing too hard on the nozzle will result in too much paint - less is more!

materials The group learned how upcycled materials can be used to make stencils and as canvases in street art installations. Large cinema posters and corriboard election campaign posters can be repurposed to make stencils or canvases.

They used a combination of emulsion paint and spraypaint to create their mural on three 8 foot x 4 foot corriboard sheets.

toolkit Masking tape Newspaper Corriboard Net curtains Large sheets of card Craft knives or Stanley blades Cutting mats Permanent markers Posca paint markers Montana 94 spraypaint ‘fat’ caps Exterior masonary paint Brushes Paint rollers Paint trays Ground sheets Projector Laptop iPad Dust masks Goggles Rubber gloves.

capturing As well as creating a mural to be displayed in a local secondary school, participants explored the potential of apps and social media to share their work with a wider audience.

A stop-motion animation captured the steps taken to create their public art piece as they were working on it.

They also discussed the use of app functions, like Boomerang, to capture catchy gifs that could be used for online campaigns to raise wareness of social justice issues.

Digital tools Social media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

Videos Gifs - timelapse camera function Boomerang / Rewind (Instagram camera) Stop motion animation apps: Smoovie or Stop motion studio for iPad or Android tablet (Free and paid versions) Lego movie maker (free user friendly option for your phone)

exercise toolbox FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT! Aims To identify a number of rights/themes from the UNCRC that the group collectively decide to advocate for.

To get people thinking about children’s rights and to encourage lively discussion about the importance, interconnectedness and interdependence of each right.

To help the group narrow down a theme to inspire image generation.

To introduce advocacy themes.

Materials Masking tape Children’s Rights symbols - can be found at https://www.oco.ie/childrens-rights/education-materials/ Paper Markers

Participants 4-26

Directions Using masking tape, create a boat shape on the floor large enough to fit all of the participants.

Lay the pictures representing all the children’s rights out on the floor.

Invite participants to walk around and consider each right, taking time to select one that they identify with or that they feel represents a cause they feel strongly about or would like to represent.

Ask the group to step aboard the ‘boat’. Tell them that the boat is sinking under the weight and that they need to decide as a group which ‘rights advocate’ needs to leave the boat and which rights are the “most important” and need to stay on board.

Depending on how many themes you wish to identify, decide how many rights advocates may remain in the boat.

This exercise is designed to be difficult and to put a little pressure on the participants, so if the group get stuck, remind them that they are being timed and if they do not decide, then the boat will sink and all of the rights will be lost.

To make it even more difficult, allow space for only one right to be left in the boat.

feedback Once the group are left with their chosen “most important” right(s) in the boat, give them the chance to feed back on the process: What did you notice about the UNCRC when advocating for one specific right?

How did it feel when you were being made to leave the boat?

How did it feel to need to argue your case against each other about which right was more valuable?

How did it feel to be the one left in the boat?

What has doing this exercise brought up about advocating for a right?

Continued Learning Make note of this discussion (visually record if possible) Some of the observations made during this discussion can be used to fuel further debate around advocacy and human rights.

creative write FOR YOUR RIGHT! Aims To generate powerful statements as a group to use in street art.

To highlight more ways that the UNCRC can act as inspiration for art and action

Materials Post-its Markers Stencil materials

Participants Any number

Directions Leading on from the previous exercise of identifying the group’s most commonly valued children’s rights, we use a simple creative writing exercise to facilitate the group in turning these rights into powerful statements.

We formulate the start/end of a sentence incorporating the chosen ‘right’ For example if the right is “Doing What’s Best for the Children”, the sentence could be “We do what’s best for the children because....”

Or if the right is “Having a Say” The sentence could be, “Without having a say....”

Each participant is given a post-it and time to sit and write their sentence.

Each individual is then invited to stand up and read their sentence out, one by one, while sticking their post-its in a vertical row on the wall.

Participants may rearrange the post-its as they see them making the most sense and then read them aloud together as a poem.

Invite participants to vote on the sentence that they feel would make the most impactful statement for their street art piece.

The ‘winning’ sentence can be made into a stencil using a computer and projector.

If you don’t have a projector, you can use a computer and printer with a word-processing programme like Microsoft Word and printing one letter to each page. These can be stuck onto stronger card to be cut for stencils.

Some of the observations made during this discussion can be used to fuel further debate around advocacy and human rights.

Stand up FOR YOUR RIGHT! Leading on from the previous exercise, participants Illustrate their statements using their bodies.

They become public advocates for the right they are representing by putting themselves into their street art.

Aims To generate images using statements about Children’s rights To allow participants to learn how to put themselves or other people into their street art, using ‘Banksy-style’ stencils.

Materials Post-its Markers Camera Computer (with Photoshop or similar programme) Digital projector Card/strong paper for stencils The stronger material used, the more durable and reusable your stencil will be.

Blades Cutting mats Masking tape Wall space to draw against

Participants 2+

Directions Participants may work as individuals, or in small groups, led by the type of image they wish to use for their mural.

Set a stage area in the room for the participants to ‘perform’ their statements, ideally a clear space against a white/plain background. Overhead, even lighting works best for the photographs needed to create the stencils.

Avoid areas with bright light coming at the subject from one side, as this could cause too much contrast when editing the photos.

Ask participants to represent their statements using their bodies by creating a freeze-frame or a still image based on their chosen theme, ‘performing’ them one at a time for one another. To turn this into a game, participants may guess what each other are trying to express.

Photograph these still frames. The better quality the camera and the clearer the photographs taken, the better the level of detail achieved in their stencil.

Use the ‘Threshold’ function on Photoshop to reduce the photographs into monochrome images. When happy with how this looks, project the image on to the wall.

Using a marker, trace the image onto card at participants’ chosen scale. The black part of the image is the part they will cut out to allow the paint to go through, so bear that in mind when tracing the image from the projector.

Colouring in or marking the black areas as they trace can help, as the image can look confusing when the projector is switched off. When drawing, participants should be conscious that the card must stay together when all the pieces are cut out, so should trace around the image as accurately as possible, while also making sure the shape is manageable to cut. When white details are surrounded by black areas, there must be white ‘bridges’ connecting them to the outer stencil area - cutting out the black area means everything contained within it will fall out. As much detail as possible should be included, especially in areas like facial features to ensure a better quality final image.

Using craft knives and cutting mats, cut out the black shapes you traced around to make up your image. When it is all cut, your image can be easily transfered to your chosen surface using spray paint.

resources and reading Street artist JR’s ted talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw

Image creation GIMP Image Manipulation Programme: https://www.gimp.org Wall Art Generator: https://rasterbator.net Colour Pallette https://color.adobe.com

uncrc resources https://www.oco.ie/childrens-rights/education-materials/

Sustainable development goals https://www.globalgoals.org/resources http://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org https://filmsfortheplanet.com/project/resources-for-teachingthe-sustainable-development-goals/

Websites www.creativityandchange.ie www.facebook.com/splattervan www.developmenteducation.ie https://www.irishaid.ie/ teaching-and-learning/resources

Common Cause Handbook https://valuesandframes.org/resources/CCF_report_ common_cause_handbook.pdf More resources from Common Cause: https://valuesandframes.org/downloads