The kick-off workshop
We launched the creative labs in Denmark with a kick-off workshop on November 9th, to get the Artcyclers community going in Copenhagen. The workshop was based on an open call, spreading the word in our network and calling out to some of the small schools like TUBA and KUBA of which Copenhagen and Denmark is quite rich.
The workshop brought together an interesting group of young and old, teachers and students, socially challenged and their helpers, for 4 hours of discussing, imagining, and collecting materials in the immediate surroundings of our community house. It gave us an occasion to make a bridge for a day between local community inspirators who offer creative opportunities to socially and mentally challenged youth in the neighbourhood, and professional designers working for 25 years with creating sustainable art work.
We had designed a day following some of the methods we have previously used to explore the resources of local surroundings. Rather than starting from the intentions of an artist in creating a particular piece of work, this places the relation in the center, between waste in an urban space and creative collaboration. The 14 participants went off ‘hunting for gold’, and came back with what became a kind of mapping of the area’s profile: empty beer cans and wrapping (there is a large number of social care users with alcohol problems); a broken umbrella (it had been raining), leaves and branches (nature’s waste in the fall?); and so on. After the collection exercise, the participants worked on what could be created with the materials, and discussed how the method could be applied to other users.
There was a general agreement in the group that even for the teachers, the process and the reflections that went with it, are quite challenging if you are not already a trained artist. On the other hand, the participants that had training could be challenged by their assumptions on “recycled art” and sustainability. Not everything you collect and find is suited for recycling, and there is always the issue of transformation of materials, as pointed out by the sustainable designer. However, the workshop was also a lot of fun, and both young and senior citizens were eager to continue the learning journey.
The inventory
Through the workshop, we could start the process of making a small inventory of materials that we plan to let grow and explore further in creations over the coming months. Our space will become a small experimental lab for artcyclers to explore and bring to – in collaboration with projects based on these methods, like the “Gold Mine”. Today, our inventory consists of old posters, small storage boxes, small peculiar things in metal, and of course the variety of mixed objects that were collected during the first workshop. So far, the potential of this ‘mine’ is rather unknown. These days, Copenhagen is more than rich on scrap-art objects, and the ‘commercial’ value is hard to see until we reach a different level of quality. This is a challenge that we will pursue with our coming participants.
With the visiting of craft experts in the coming months we imagine we will be inspired to do much more explorations for the ‘old’. By learning from their techniques and material practices we will be looking for specific types or sources of materials, and let the participants shape their productions by finding and selecting the materials in their creative processes. An important part of the process of creating things that are actually possible to sell, is about interrogating our surroundings to see where the needs and the demand could be.
Although highly trained in the skill of ‘midwiving’ cultural and social entrepreneurs, the specific process of Artcycling for us explores a new practice of making and we are still curious to the forms the work will take. We look forward to sharing more from here along the ways as it manifests!
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