Winter & Summer Camp

WINTER CAMP

During the two weeks of the Winter Camp, the activities were divided into two groups: the Arts group, led by Dorota and Klaudia, and the Dance & Theatre group, led by Zuzza. Each day, I joined one of the groups, supporting the workshops and documenting the activities through videos that captured the creativity of the camp.

During the first two days, I led the sessions together with Sara, another volunteer from the IntegrART project. In the theatre workshops, the children had to represent different places and scenarios, through interaction between them and acting, while the rest of the group tried to guess them. From the slow gravity of moon to fantastic dragon forests, the children used objects available in the room to help build and communicate their imaginary worlds. Other interpretation and theater games were also explored throughout the sessions.

In the arts classroom, we experimented with painting elbow pasta and creating colorful patterns, which later became vibrant handmade necklaces.

These first days working alongside Sara were especially important for me, as they helped me become more comfortable with the children while sharing the responsibility of leading the activities together.

During the rest of the camp, I explored interpretative dance activities with the children. I showed them an object, and they had to use their bodies to express its movement and qualities. Some movements were fast, others fluid, some travelled from the ground upwards, while others moved from top to bottom. Through these exercises, the children explored creativity, body awareness and imagination through movement. We also worked on spatial awareness as a group, creating exercises where, while moving, no empty spaces could remain in the room. One of the highlights of these sessions was learning a TikTok dance together, which brought lots of energy and laughter to the group.

In the arts workshops, the young artists were given a special challenge. Working in teams and trusting one another, they created drawings of landscapes while blindfolded, relying only on the guidance of their teammates. The landscapes were from Portugal, which became a way for me to share a bit of my country and culture with them.

I also had the opportunity to use my sewing skills by helping the children create a fabric teddy bear during one of Dorota and Klaudia’s workshops. This was my first more regular experience working closely with these children, and it gave me a lot of confidence. I realized that teaching children who don’t speak the same language as me can be challenging, but it is something that can be overcome through creativity, patience and interaction beyond words and, sometimes… not words.

SUMMER CAMP: AROUND THE WORLD THROUGH CREATIVITY

The Summer Camp was three weeks full of travelling, exploration, and discovering new cultures. With the Art & Crafts group, inspired by the book Around the World in Eighty Days, each day our activities were connected to a different country. The children travelled to Turkey, Japan, Australia, and many other places. It was a fun way to discover something new about each country and learn about the cultures and traditions of the people who live there.

Together with Sara, the other volunteer from the IntegrART9 project, we prepared a variety of activities inspired by different countries.

In Turkey, we created the Turkish Evil Eye, made from papier-mâché, traditionally believed to protect people from the evil gaze.

In Japan, we made Kinguio, the Japanese goldfish, using toilet paper rolls, paint, and crepe paper. The goldfish is a symbol of strength, perseverance, and good luck, everything we want for our students.

In Australia, we created a whole forest filled with monkeys, spiders, snakes, and many other exotic animals. It was especially interesting to see how quickly the children’s creativity took over. We introduced them to just a few basic animals, and suddenly there were many more varieties than we had originally suggested, like parrots, and they were even more colourful! It was wonderful to see that creativity is contagious.

We also explored macramé and, for the first time, experimented with body painting using traditional Indian henna. This was one of my personal favourites because it became a moment of trust. The children trusted us to draw on their hands and arms without even knowing what we were going to create. It was a beautiful kind of shared trust, combined with improvisation.

With the Theatre group, I cannot leave out the game Zip Zap Boing. It was by far the game they asked us to play the most, and by the end it had almost become a reward: if we completed everything we had planned for the class, we would have time to play Zip Zap Boing at the end.

With this group, we focused especially on developing creativity through imagination, for example, looking at an object and deconstructing it, imagining a completely different purpose for it, and giving it a new function.

I believe exercises and games that stimulate imagination are becoming increasingly important for younger generations. With all the technological advances around us, we no longer always need to think things through ourselves. We have artificial intelligence that can increasingly do this for us. This makes spaces where children can explore, experiment, imagine, and create are even more valuable.

Having these kinds of classes and cultural spaces, such as Klub Kultury Mydlniki, is important for preserving one of the greatest powers human beings have: creativity.

And so, with lots of creativity and fun, our Summer Camp came to an end.

Thank you to all the students who took part. Even when communication was sometimes difficult and we did not always understand each other perfectly, the final results of our work together were positive, surprising, and truly engaging.

It was a pleasure to travel around the world with you, without ever leaving Mydlniki.