On Saturday I made, with the help of volunteers, the first workshop of the annual Feira rural in Torres Vedras.

 I can not be happier about how it went. A lot of people came specifically to do it because they had seen our posters, and others were walking along the Feira and they found us making paper and wanted to join the experience of creating their own paper using traditional methods. 

The speciality of our workshop was that we discovered the technique of how to make handmade paper without using glue or chemical dyes. 

 We create our paper and decorate with plants, flowers and other papers dyes or fruit.

The idea of the workshop was not only to teach how we can make handmade paper, as well make awareness about how we can fabricate new paper with naturals and quotidian things which we have at home as fruit peels, pencil shavings, flowers...Also the importance of the correct use we must give to the paper.

Back to normal

After an exhausting workshop week we got the chance to have a short, calm and most importantly warm and sunny week. So I used the opportunity and tried to enjoy the sun as much as I could..

Pipripi

After the first common workshop, it's time to work on the individual one.

Mine is called Pipripi and is focused on sound and music in relation with art and space with main objectives as :

• To perceive art as an experience (personnal or collective).
• Platform for collective, multiple interaction.
• Basic electrical, recording and mixing knowledges

It's a creating a more active and federative dialogue between sound, space and community.

In that synth workshop we will build experimental sound machines (starting with a LFO) on the basis of digital logic chips (IC) and different resistors, capacitors and potentiometers in the perspective to use it live for the opening of the Soundproof session on April 25 in Transforma.CAIXA.

For the now, the schedule looks like that :

21.04: Soundwalk and field recording in Torres Vedras (basic use and mix of this sound material with Audacity).

22.04: Building of the synth (reading schematics, understanding of electrical concepts; how to use a breadboard and how to solder, experimenting different square waves…).

23:04: Composition and rehearsal of the opening show of Soundproof. Making of the podcast.

Thaumatrope, phenakistiscope and other illusions

A challenging week and a good first test for our upcoming workshops. Like previously said on other posts, the main issue was the intern communication and the organizational structure that get solved after first days. The main positive point is that participants enjoyed this week and personally it confirmed me that I would like to keep continue working with children in relation with different innovative art mediums.

Um Castelo Vivo

Construção do set (timelapse)

nomen omen

Valerie is apparently a witch or a Czech Nostradamus, because the title of her post  describes perfectly the final show of the stopmotion animation called Panico do Castelo.

It was indeed a panic in Transforma, because unfortunately computers let us down. By the way, who on Earth would think that we're gonna have problems with computers, not children. 

The space was arranged as a cinema, there was also an exhibition  which consisted of castles made from recycled materials, collages and drawings. An exhibition curated with a lot of thought (maybe even too much) by me and Valerie. 

So the show was delayed for an hour, probably the most embarassing hour of my life. At least we had some sweets brought by parents to cheer up. Finally we had to show the animation without a sound, crushing down every 2 seconds.

But children liked the workshops and this is the most important thing. I also liked the children and this is the second most important thing. And thanks to little Inês I know how to correctly pronounce maçã and this is a lesson I will remember for my whole life.

Meu pânico no workshop

Tomorrow is the last day of our Easter workshop with children and I am entering it with mixed feelings and a lot of expectations about our final product.
The first half of the week I noticed a lot of problems caused especially by our incapability to communicate with the children and with ourselves (as the volunteers team counted the same number of persons as the participants). Also I felt that our lack of experiences with working with children (except Esther of course) was affecting the course of the workshop.
However the second half of the week went surprisingly much better. We found our own language to communicate with the kids and we were able to organize ourselves much better in the smaller team. The children seem to enjoy the activities and the time spent with us and I have to say they are the best teachers of Portuguese one could ever have!