Marshmallows on the fire!!
Updated: Jul 5, 2018
The last workshop of the Belong Billund project sadly came around too quickly and it was time to bring together the ideas and the results of everything we have created and achieved in the last two months with the Billund group.
Mike, Culture Shift’s Music facilitator, joined us in this last workshop, entertaining the kids with his amazing and fun People-to-People dance to the rhythm and beats of his drum. The children had a lot of fun as they warmed up in preparation for the task of the day.
When I talk about bringing together what we created, I’m not speaking just metaphorically, but in fact the activity of the day was using all of our creations as material to create a Belong camping site! Culture Shift provided bamboo sticks that could be used to build teepees and tents using, for example, the blankets from the first workshops: “My Name Is” (check out 2nd May), or the picnic blankets from the ‘Skovtur’ (check out 9th May). And we also had the belong bags, the pillow cases and even more cardboard and scrap materials to make the perfect camping corner!
Playing around with gravity and balancing weights and forces, we managed to put up quite elaborate constructions of different types, fixing them together and to the floor with lots of tape and elephant snot (the Danish name for BluTac!). Some groups also made tables out of large cardboards sheets to exhibit their crockery and some of the belongings we had made for the belong bags. One of the children made a perfect sketch of the construction his group was planning to build, complete with measurements and proportions! The Staplers group had also made a fire from cardboard and red paper, in order to bake their marshmallows!!
The final activity of the day was to get some general feedback from the children about the whole project, and so we set up some stations with different tasks and questions to help the participants to reflect about what they had learnt, what they had enjoyed the most, how the project could be improved and what impact the Belong project had made on their sense of wellbeing... Did you make new friends? Did you learn new words? What are you most proud of?
We adults, are so proud of all the Belong Billund Artists... for their lively imaginations, and the energy and excitement they have brought to the workshops. We learnt how to listen to the children’s views, and to follow and acknowledge their rhythm and input. Belong impacted our experience by seeing how rewarding it is to let new friends from all over the world enter into our comfort zone.
Next week there will be the final exhibition where the parents of the children from both schools are invited to see all the young Belong Artists creations!!
Thank you to all of the Billund children and teachers!