Building for Belonging
October 2018 - January 2019
Art courses and workshops for young people
11 - 14 years / 15 - 18 years / 19 - 25 years
Each workshop series - £20 per person
Live in the B12 postcode? In this case all workshop series are FREE!
Do you love making secret dens, or building mansions in Minecraft? Perhaps your bedroom is your fortress, or the street corners your hangout? Or maybe your housing is a never-ending nightmare, trapped between Hotel of Mum-and-Dad and damp bedsits with soaring rents?
Space can be fun, fascinating and frustrating. Whatever your relationship to places and spaces, Building for Belonging is an arts project exploring themes of Home, Place and Belonging, giving you a chance to tackle the topic creatively. Led by professional artists, the workshops are tailored to different age groups, engaging a wide range of arts activities including model making, mapping, crafting and printmaking. There'll be site visits, a walking tour and an opportunity to design and promote your own housing campaign, encouraging you to reflect on how you can actively shape the spaces and places around you.
At the end of the project all work will feature in the Building for Belonging exhibition in January 2019.
To sign up to a course, please email admin@thegapartsproject.co.uk with 'Building for Belonging' as the subject
Course 1
11 - 14 year olds
Half Term dates
Monday 29 October 11am - 4pm
Tuesday 30 October 11am - 4pm
Wednesday 1 November 11am - 1pm
This series of workshops will take 11 - 14 year olds on a fascinating exploration of house and home design and consider how the buildings we live in affect the ways we live.
We will go on two site visits, one to the Birmingham Back to Backs and one to the Zero Carbon House in Balsall Heath, one of the most innovative contemporary home designs in the country. We'll reflect on how space and light, shapes and surfaces make us feel, as we look for inspiration for our own exciting designs. We'll then develop our designs on paper before transforming them into 3D models which we'll make from tiber scraps and waste materials.
Course 2
15 - 18 year olds
Half Term dates
Tuesday 30 October 11am - 4pm
Friday 2 November 11am - 4pm
Sunday 4 November 2pm - 4pm
A map can be so much more than a geographical tool: a map can tell us the stories of a place, its cultural histories, its migration stories and so much more. Following a fascinating walking tour of Balsall Heath, investigating how we shape the area and how it shapes us, you'll experiment with photography, collage, digital media - and even spices! - to create alternative maps that tell us a different story of where we are as young people in todays world.
Course 3
15 - 18 year olds
Weekly evening sessions
Every Wednesday from 7 November to the 12 December, 6.30 - 8.30pm
(Content the same as Course 2)
A map can be so much more than a geographical tool: a map can tell us the stories of a place, its cultural histories, its migration stories and so much more. Following a fascinating walking tour of Balsall Heath, investigating how we shape the area and how it shapes us, you'll experiment with photography, collage, digital media - and even spices! - to create alternative maps that tell us a different story of where we are as young people in todays world.
Course 4
19 - 25 year olds
Half Term dates
Saturday 27 October 11am - 5pm
Sunday 28 October 11am - 5pm
Wednesday 31 October 6pm - 9pm
A two-and-a-half day creative exploration of the role of housing within our lives as young people: a space in which to learn from each other by sharing our knowledge and personal experiences of housing issues, identifying what really makes a 'home', and imagining alternative ways of living which fulfill our needs and desires.
You will consider some of the ways in which artists and activists have creatively addressed these issues, before developing your own artistic responses. Using lino printing techniques you will create your own postcard designs inspired by our discussions, and co-design a campaign for creatively distributing your postcards and campaign message across the public sphere.
Course 5
19 - 25 year olds
Weekly evening sessions
Every Wednesday from 7 November to the 12 December, 6pm - 9pm
These creative sessions will see you learning about the power of printmaking as a tool for communicating effective campaign messages. After experimenting with screen printing techniques, you will apply your newly learned skills to the design and creation of posters with engaging images and slogans drawing attention to young people's housing issues. In the final session you will co-design and curate a public exhibition to showcase your posters and all the artwork generated by the project.
Course 6
11 - 14 year olds
Weekly evening workshops
Thursday 1, 8 & 29 November
Thursday 6 and 13 December, all 6pm - 8pm
This course of art workshops for 11 -14 year olds will use a variety of different crafting and making techniques to produce a small range of items associated with 'home' and crossing the threshold - house name-plates, key racks for front door keys and rag-rug doormats - all using simple waste materials.
