| ACTIVITY TITLE | Generate your own idea: feel your inner self |
| AIM | Ceramic workshops allow you to express your personal emotions, your most intimate feelings, giving space to your imagination and creativity. They promote the development of young people’s socio-emotional skills, both intrapersonal (linked to the self) and interpersonal ones (linked to the relationship with others) and so as to combat exclusion and promote social integration. During this initial workshop, the goal is therefore to promote individual expressiveness and enhance one’s creativity (need to nurture your creativity and your inner artist) |
| TRAINEE(S) PROFILE(S) | Participants, Trainers, Assistants |
| LEARNING OBJECTIVES (min. 3) | Feel your emotions Enhance the ability to explore oneself deeply (digging deeper into your mindset)Be able to express your emotions, in a non-verbal way and through artistic-manual practiceEnhance creativity, working on imagination, ideation, development of ideasEncourage artistic expression |
| TEACHING METHOD(S) | The trainer helps the learner to reflect on himself/herself, inviting them to think of an object, to imagine an object that will then be reproduced with clay. What form will this object take? What will it be used for? Why this object? What does it mean for you? |
| DURATION (in minutes) | 2 hours |
| MATERIALS NEEDED | Paper sheets Colors |
| PREPARATION STEPS | Each participant will be provided with a paper sheet and some colours to start elaborating a sketch of the artwork |
| IMPLEMENTATION STEPS | 1. Ideate: think about the object, imagine it mentally, generate the idea on a mental level before sketching 2. Draw: start drawing the sketch and with the help of some markers and erasers try to reproduce your object. Using different colors, you can express your inner feelings and emotions 3. Practice: better define the shape, improve the quality of the sketch, and add any additional elements, including decorative ones. 4. Finalize: finalize your sketch. Later, from this sketch you will realize your handmade artwork with the use of the clay. |
| DEBRIEFING/REFLECTION | For the trainer: ask the participants what their feelings and emotions are when sketching. Do you like your sketch? What would you like to improve? Remember: drawing and sketching should be a relaxing moment, thus avoiding stress. The goal is not to get a perfect and impressive sketch.For the participant: try to boost your imagination, starting from very abstract things, for example: how would you represent the waves of the sea? What form do they have? How would you represent the breath of the wind? What form does it have? And the flap of a flame? A mountain? |
| TIPS AND HINTS | For the trainer: promote individual creativity and avoid any comments or corrections about the quality of the drawing/sketch. It’s a very intimate and individual phase, whose goal is to allow the participant to express innate feelings and emotions freely and without constraints. Some suggestions for the participants: Use your imagination Map your emotions Don’t be afraid to make mistakes Have fun Find your inner self and your own mantra |
| INNOVATION/ADDED VALUE | Verbal language is replaced by artistic practice as main form of individual expression. The artistic practice becomes part of a pedagogical pathway, where the individual learns to discover himself/herself and to tell others about himself/herself |
| ACTIVITY TITLE | Haptic perception: let’s discover the clay! |
| AIM | In this phase, participants have a very first contact with the clay. As a participant, you start exploring the clay and begin manipulating it, while studying its consistency, its texture etc. It is a very exploratory phase where the participant uses the 5 senses (specifically touch). |
| TRAINEE(S) PROFILE(S) | Participants, Trainers, Assistants |
| LEARNING OBJECTIVES (min. 3) | Enhance sensorially, mainly touch Generating surprise in front of something unknown (it’s a very first contact with the clay)Encourage the participant to explore, experiment, manipulate and shape without being afraid of making mistakes |
| TEACHING METHOD(S) | In this phase, the trainer leaves the participant free to explore the clay, inviting him/her to perceive the consistency, the sense of heat or cold (temperature, etc.), and the texture of the clay. It is a truly experimental and exploratory phase. |
| DURATION (in minutes) | 2 hours |
| MATERIALS NEEDED | 1 piece of clay (white, black, red, as needed)
Water (to be able to shape the clay) |
| PREPARATION STEPS | Get a worktable (a surface where to work). NB. choose a porous and not smooth worktable, to prevent the clay from sticking as it is damp originally. Therefore, avoid plastic worktables and prefer wooden or marble ones
Find the materials: remember that there are two main types of clay available on the market, the white and the red. If you combine red and white clay, the object will already be originally colored (even if the final effect is seen only after firing). |
| IMPLEMENTATION STEPS | During this workshop you start exploring the clay with its characteristics, it is an exploratory phase. Very important is the exercise, the practice: focus on the realization phase, where you model, you give the shape, you change the shape, you develop your manual skills. You can also make some mistakes. If you fail, don’t worry, and try again. Shaping: start shaping from very simple objects. Try to manipulate and shape small clay balls and try to reproduce very simple objects (an animal, a flower, a glass etc.)Improving: through exercise and shaping more and more times, you will eventually obtain a homogeneous mass (a clay free of any impurities) ready to be processed in the following phases. |
| TIPS AND HINTS | Some technical tips: When shaping the clay, be careful about how much water you need. The more you manipulate/shape with your hands, the more the clay in contact with the air tends to dry quicklyBe careful that: the more you manipulate and touch the clay, the more the clay will be malleable and easy to manipulate, as it dries out very easily by evaporating the water |
| INNOVATION/ADDED VALUE | This activity is based on direct experimentation by the individual and on learning by doing. |
| SUGGESTED READINGS | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48HW9kQXL64 |