2021 EDUCATION REPORT

As the world continued to grapple with the restrictions and obstacles posed by the COVID pandemic in 2021, USk Education Committee worked on bringing inspiration and learning opportunities to our global community.

One way USk engaged with urban sketchers around the world was through USk Talks – Season 2, a series of interviews aired live on YouTube. Urban Sketchers also supported the efforts to tell stories through drawing with the USk Reportage Grant. The USk Education Committee worked on finding new creative ways to teach and lead our community in these challenging times.

USK TALKS

In 2021 the USk Talks Team prepared and broadcast 18 episodes that aired live on the USk YouTube Channel. Each episode averaged about 90 minutes. Some of the topics included “What is Reportage?”, “Sketching Venice with John Ruskin”, “Visual Storytelling: Practical Tips”, “Victorian Women Sketchers”, “Artist as a Reporter”, “How to Sketch a Country”, “Hidden Beauty of Industrial Heritage & Spirit of Mumbai,” and many others.

USkTalks interviewed tool makers, chapter administrators, instructors, and individual sketchers, while the primary focus was on storytelling and reportage. Through this channel, we have elevated new voices, geographic areas, and stories.

USk learned about the disappearing craft of coppersmithing in Pune, India; shuttered independent theaters in New York; how cruise ships are built in Genoa, Italy; how pencils are made in Austria; how sketchers can think of their drawing as film directors. USk talked about the difference between drawing and reportage, how urban sketching can help us preserve and celebrate historic shopfronts and local businesses; what women sketchers saw and drew during the Victorian era; how reportage could be done in a war zone but also in your own living room; how sketchers can be inspired to tell stories of local cataclysmic events, like an explosion in Beirut. Others showed how they can be inspired even by the confines of the lockdown to show what is happening in their neighborhood.

Showing diversity and empowering voices from different corners of the world has been one of big goals for the USk Talks project. By the end of season 2, Urban Sketchers will have interviewed sketchers from:

US UK Saudi Arabia Ecuador Argentina Austria Portugal Italy India Korea New Zealand Australia Israel Indonesia Singapore Hong Kong Thailand Malaysia Ireland France Germany Spain Netherlands Sweden China Lebanon Canada With the return of in-person gatherings, workshops, symposiums, and regional events USk Talks team has decided to pause the production of its weekly shows. Some members had to leave the production for personal reasons, others needed a break from the demands of preparing and airing content on a weekly basis. If USk Talks is to resume in the future we would be looking for a new team of passionate volunteers.

The home page for the USk Talks program has had more than 35K views since its creation in early April 2020. Our subscriber base on YouTube grew to 12.9K and we currently average about 2.5K views per episode.

Explore USk Talks here.

2021 EDUCATION REPORT

Visual storytelling lies at the heart of the urban sketching movement. Urban Sketchers’ Reportage Grant program highlights stories from around the world that tell a story by capturing an event and showing context, characters, and setting.

MAT LET These stories highlight an aspect of local culture, a moment in time, an industry or trade, and societal change in drawings and writing. The program is designed to highlight the best examples of drawing reportage in our community and inspire a new generation of artist reporters.

We are happy to present the final projects that were completed during 2021:

• THE ROOM, PARIS (FRANCE)

BY MATHIEU LETELLIER (AKA. MAT LET) Mat’s project brought him face to face with a new vocabulary, medical products, people and experiences that are unknown to most or depicted misleadingly in films and the media. ‘The Room’ was founded in 2016 and gives drug users a safer, supervised space to consume drugs, an activity usually done on the street, “in the shadows.”. Knowing the power of sketching to humanize and break down stigma, the French charity Médecins du Monde (Mdm) asked Mat Let to do a series of sketches at the Drug Consumption Room in the Barbès, Gare du Nord and Porte de la Chapelle neighborhoods in Paris.

Many who come to The Room do not want to leave as this is almost the only place where drug users get respect and care instead of stigmatization and violence. There was a surprising amount of laughter, solidarity, care and respect here, all of which Mat captured in his sketches. He felt privileged to meet the staff and those they help at this unique center. And though his visits were usually challenging on several levels, he says, “Just like my fellow human beings, I feel a little better after each visit.”

USK MUMBAI

• CHAWLS OF MUMBAI: “THE SOCIAL NETWORK”, MUMBAI (INDIA)

BY USK MUMBAI The epic diversity of Mumbai ‘chawls’ – humble inner city tenement dwellings once designed to house migrant workers but now supporting generations of families – called for a collaborative approach. Four members of USK Mumbai joined forces to sketch the many faces, architectures and experiences of these locations – from light and colour-filled celebrations such as the dressing of holy basil (tulsi) trees, to the everyday lives of hardworking women tailors and lantern sellers, as well as the efforts of one artistic resident to beautify his small balcony.

Here, people live shoulder to shoulder with only small balconies and shared courtyards for breathing space; residents have to leave any hopes of privacy or solitude behind them. They benefit from the togetherness, conversation, laughter and community support of this style of living, but there is the flip side, too: the strain of subsistence living at such close quarters and neighborhood feuds and petty squabbles that are difficult to ignore or block out.

Chawls also have a fascinating social and political history, their raw energy giving rise to political movements and activists, as well as to movie stars and mafia members. Many chawls are now being cleared to make way for new city infrastructure and accommodation, so the Mumbai sketchers knew they were recording a way of life that may be under threat. Many shared time with residents and listened to their stories. Their combined work, coming from multiple perspectives and passions, shows life in all its kaleidoscope color and variety, a fitting tribute indeed to life in the chawl.

USK MUMBAI

BY XXX

FARAH IRANI

• RIPPLE EFFECT OF A HISTORIC MARKET, PUNE (INDIA)

BY FARAH IRANI Farah Irani had been sketching her neighborhood in the city of Pune for some time, on a road full of historic buildings built during the colonial British era. For this project, she concentrated on a unique historic market, to understand how the local people have reclaimed and repurposed it, and how the British and Indian influences have evolved during the pandemic. According to laws put in place by the British, vendors can only sell what they are licensed to at the centuryold Mandai market – but they find ways to adapt their wares to the ever changing festivals and customer demands: “For Diwali it’s brooms, for the Ganesh Festival it’s creative pedestals for the installation of the idol, for Dussehra, there are mountains of marigolds,” says Farah. One memorable day, Farah drew the broom vendor at right, who was perched high on a pile of his wares: “It looked like he had attained nirvana there, as he took his calls and handled his thronging customers in a peaceful manner.... he even tried to see that I had a cup of hot tea, organized a chair for me to sit on despite my protests, and ensured his men directed the chaotic traffic around me just so that I could sketch.” The market stalls mirror India’s many festivals, and the broom vendor was catering to the tradition of sweeping away poverty in the home. This happens on the day before the traditional financial year ends, when Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, visits around midnight and tries to find the cleanest house. “Through this type of storytelling I have learned to dive in deep to look for those untold stories, to spend time with the subject to appreciate and highlight the need for conservation of an aging structure,” says Farah.

• NIGHT PEOPLE STREET PORTRAITS, BERLIN KANTSTRASSE, BERLIN (GERMANY) BY ROLF SCHRÖTER Rolf Schroeter got to know one street in his neighborhood intimately – Kantstraße, which connects the Berlin Fair and International Congress Center with the Beitscheidtplatz in the center of the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. A hub for restaurants, bars, theatre and “overall intense nightlife”, he’d walked through it countless times but only started exploring it in great detail with this project.

ROLF SCHRÖTER

He started at an uneasy point continuing through periods of greater restrictions. As he is by no means an extrovert, tackling portraits was a challenge: “My method is to quite openly start a drawing of a situation, always containing a capture of some person in a habitat. So I already catch a bit of context and at the same time sometimes attract attention that can be a starting point for a conversation. Sometimes this leads to a portrait sitting (right away or scheduled on another date); other times I only collect some info, thoughts and views from a conversation.”

• THE SHIFTING LANDSCAPES OF DESPAIR, HOPE, SURVIVAL & PERSISTENCE, SEATTLE (USA)

BY DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM Is it a right, a privilege, a reward, or a necessity to have a safe, dry home? Homelessness has become interwoven with the Seattle streetscape; over 11,000 people are experiencing this destabilizing way of life, and thousands of businesses have closed in the wake of COVID-19. For those few, like Daniel Winterbottom, who do not walk by with eyes fixed on some other place, there are stories to be heard, heartbreak to be witnessed or imagined, and myriad unexpected details that jolt our perceptions and prejudices – like people’s efforts to keep their campsites clean without running water or storage materials, some placing bouquets of wildflowers at their entrances to make them more homely.

Daniel says his year-long project began “as an unintentional act of art therapy – a response to the pandemic’s containment and alienation.” He felt it was important to learn about homelessness from the people impacted by it, and to provide “evidence that it is real, and that we as a society have, in part, turning away allowed it to happen.” One silver lining was that he found a renewed passion for sketching “as an act of observation, documentation, and expression.” Each sketch of a dwelling, shelter, or abandoned piece of furniture is so detailed and sensitive that it makes us wonder about the individuals and families linked to it. The sketches seem to ask us to see the human impact, the wasted potential, and the obligation to do more than just turn away.

DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM

USK WORKSHOPS

Even as COVID presented challenges for gathering and learning in person we were happy to see the return of some of our beloved workshops in 2021. We are hoping that as the situation improves more and more workshop proposals will be pouring in.