CASE STUDY
pyrography street art
Mayfield Community Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland July 7th - 10th 2009
Theme: The environment
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background
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GlobalFest 2009 is a project coordinated by Mayfield Community Arts Centre that brings together young artists from Ireland, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, Sweden and Hungary. The young people participated in a variety of workshops during a period of 2 weeks: music, dance, theatre, pyrography, muralism, recycle art and costumes. Some of the work accomplished in these workshops led to public performances during GlobalFest on Saturday 18th July 2009. This was the case for the African music and dance, the Colombian music and dance as well as the theatre performances, which all formed part of the comparsa (parade). The costumes made were worn by the dancers and actors and the recycle art workshop created a 3D interactive boardgame which was played during GlobalFest. There was a launch on Wednesday 15th July at Mayfield Library for the mural (painted on two walls at Mayfield Library) and the pyrography work. The latter was exhibited that evening at the library. All of the workshops were facilitated by the following associations: Mayfield Community Arts Centre (Ireland), Mural Moral Group (Hungary), Kultur & Fritid (Sweden), Funarte (Nicaragua), La Cambalacha (Guatemala), Centro Colombo Americano and Corporación Renovación Cultural (Colombia).
FACILITATORS Fredy Gutierrez (Colombia) Ronan Forde & Nora Furlong (Ireland) VOLUNTEERS Gerard Nyhan, Brian Walsh & Tara Daly (Ireland) PARTICIPANTS Orsolya Kovacs & Lilla Szilagyi (Hungary) Patricia Peña Mazo (Colombia), Darren Rolston, Squaby O’Sullivan, Jade Lonergan, Angelina Quilligan, Noreen Butler, Tamara, Aliana, Izabel, Jane (Ireland).
HOW DID WE DO IT? Day 1 Enabling Creativity The group began with a visual exercise involving the exploration of one’s own image and interests in order to let the other participants know them better. Each creative activity began with an enjoyable exercise designed to help the participants concentrate.
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Day 2 Burning an Image onto Wood The theme of the environment was selected and the group began to explore their ideas and opinions and develop images and slogans to help them express their ideas. THe participants were introduced to the pyrography tool, a tool with a heated meta tip that can be used to burn drawings into wood. The young people copied ther images onto acetate to project them to a larger scale to draw on the wood
Day 3 Applying Tape, Paint and Spray The group worked on the shades, contrasts, lines and tonalities of their images. Once the drawing was finished, tape was applied to mask the areas that were to reveal the images while the background was painted with white acrylic; finally bitumen and white spirits were rubbed into the paint to give a worn effect.
Day 4 Removing the Tape On the final day, the tape was removed in order to reveal the final results. Each piece of work also featured a sentence emphasizing certain aspects vital to the conservation of the environment.
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“I have learned that communication is the key to working together, and that you can express yourself so much through art.” Tara
quotes from participants
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“Working in an international group is interesting because sometimes we can only communicate with our hands. Sometimes it makes the work harder, but I really like international group working.” Lilla
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images of finished work
GlobalFest 2008 was funded and supported by the European Youth in Action Programme and the Development Education Unit of Irish Aid.