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InFormal Creativity – Go Visual – FOLLOW-UP

August 5, 2024

InFormal Creativity was a training course that took place in France from March 2-10 on methods and tools for visual facilitation and storytelling. It continued, however, with a drawing marathon “Drawing Together – InFormal Creativity” that lasted for two weeks from May 20 – June 3, 2024. It involved participants drawing a picture on any theme each day and posting it in the common telegram group.

Every day participants would see each other’s drawings, inspire each other for the next days, give constructive feedback and encourage each other to draw. This created a pleasant atmosphere of learning by practising together.

But this marathon was not the only outcome of the InFormal Creativity training course. The participants from Romania, Andreea Staicu, Ana-Maria Răducan and Teodora Răducan, had to disseminate the results and methods learned in France.

They facilitated various workshops in their communities.

Ana-Maria and Teodora facilitated a visual tools workshop for the volunteers of Asociația CREATIV, with whom they work in Brebu. For 3 hours they presented different drawing and visual facilitation techniques, challenged the volunteers to draw different ideas and objects in 15 seconds, helped them simplify more complex drawings using basic shapes such as triangles, circles, lines, and encouraged them to experiment with concepts for frames, arrows and fonts.

The volunteers were very excited and curious to practise, although initially they didn’t think they would have the skills for it The various games showed them that drawing is for everyone, regardless of talent or ability, and it can be practiced and explored.

Two other participants of the training course, Estel from Spain and Uğur from Turkey, also visited Brebu. On this occasion, together with Ana-Maria, they facilitated a drawing workshop for the children from Brebu who come to the activities organized on weekends by Asociația CREATIV.

They did a drawing activity based on the story of a shipwreck on a deserted island. After an adventure at sea, the children, split into two groups, were shipwrecked on a tropical island, where they had to draw their surroundings.

All the children had creative and funny ideas about what they need to survive and have fun, what animals they share the island with or what resources they find there. As they drew, they also had fun and constructive discussions, inspiring each other and working together to make the island as comfortable as possible to live on together.

And then they still managed to escape by flying off with well-crafted paper airplanes.

The workshop ended with some more quick drawing and communication-through-pictures games, where the children felt the competitive as well as the team spirit. At the end, they all felt more confident in their drawing skills, more engaged and more self-confident.