I dreamt of a swimming pool full of chocolate!
Hi! Velkom til! The Jelling Friskolen’s children arrived at Remida (center for reuse), introducing themselves to the Culture Shift team and were soon joined by the Røde Kors‘ smiling group of children around the white ‘Belong bed’.
“Why is there a bed?” Because the workshop theme for Jelling this week was: drømmerejse! An adventure through the children’s dream spaces, into their fantasies and imaginations, between the folds of their memories and wishes. The aim of this session is to create 3D models of what they imagine during their dream journey.
Lying down on a duvet, mattress and blankets, the artists were encouraged to close their eyes, listen to the calming music and be transported on a journey with the soothing voice of Lea (teacher at the Red Cross school)…..
“Let’s go for a walk through your imagination.
You are walking through a forest, the sunlight is warm on your skin as it shines through the leaves.
As you sit, a space starts to build around you.
This is a fantasy space, your dream space.
The walls start to grow…”
When the imaginary building was completed, it was time to get back to the bed and open our eyes. A long roll of paper was waiting to be filled with the still fresh images in our minds. The chit-chat from the excited narrations of the journeys had such a beautiful sound! The exchange of opinions and suggestions animated the room.
Soon after, we started to build a maquette, translating the two dimensions -the imaginations of the dream journey and the reality of the paper sketch - into the three dimensionality of the model. The artist cut and pasted together with glue guns lots of the scrap materials found at the Remida Recycling Centre.
Someone made a large living room with a cozy black couch and a large-screen tv with playstation. Someone else created a forest with branches made out of ice cream sticks, and another artist conjured a swimming pool full of chocolate!
The products were symbols of the childrens’ passions, reflecting also their wishes and desires. The best part was watching the kids sharing ideas and talking to each other about their dreams. One child, when telling about her dream, expressed the wish to make the world a better place: she drew herself defending a group of other children from bad people.
I think it’s impressive to see how art is able to take out the inner landscape of feelings, and how it enables people to empathise with each other by drawing, hand-in-hand, the lines of a shared and common better future.
Vi ses næste gange!