Highly Effective Art (HEART) Participatory Training Workshop

HIVAN?’s HEART programme invites applications from interested participants for a three day developmental workshop in Durban that trains artists and child care professionals in participatory art-making techniques with vulnerable children.

The workshop will take place 28 Feb?–02 March 2006. The closing date for applications is 16 February 2006. Please forward a brief CV and a letter of motivation.

Project Description:

The workshop will include training of art-focused persons, who work empathetically with children and youth, in the strengthening and emotionally expressive potential of art making, also the implementation of these skills in workshops with children.

The workshop is an adaptation of the ?“train the trainer approach?” which first seeks to mobilize trained art-workers in utilizing their skills for the benefit of infected and affected communities in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and second, mentors these art-workers so that they can apply their professional skills to the development of child friendly programmes to educate orphans and vulnerable children on issues surrounding HIV/AIDS. However, trainers would also impart leadership skills and knowledge to participants, equipping them through this process to become key leaders in their communities through active participation.

The training workshop with art-workers aims to create additional capacity through the sharing of new skills and participatory techniques with experienced practitioners and theorists. The workshop process would entail schooling the participants in the various levels of participation and then exposing them to use of participatory techniques using art-making. The trainers would be trained on how participation serves as a vehicle for effective art making processes.

Trainers would be mentored through the participatory process, giving them a framework to implement their techniques and methodology. Key to training in this manner is the development of an understanding that participation is a process, through which participants influence and share control over development initiatives, decisions and resources which affect them. Participation involves ownership by beneficiaries of the project. The essence of ownership is that the recipients drive the planning, design, implementation, monitoring and the evaluation of the project.

Overall Objectives of the Workshop Process:

• Develop and extend the expertise of art and child care professionals engaged in creative work with children.
• To utilise the skills and experience of art professionals to effectively participate in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
• Provide an environment for free personal expression through the medium of various art forms, facilitated by trained personnel.
• To provide children with the techniques for artistic reflection and translation into the challenges and complexities surrounding HIV/AIDS.
• To provide a therapeutic experience for children in need and to mobilize the communities response to HIV/AIDS.


Theoretical Framework:

Creative participatory art making operates on the principal that children in situations of vulnerability are often unable to voice their stress yet art can free them to be articulate. In essence, the artistic process and product enables them to better communicate their thoughts, feelings and opinions on subjects they might otherwise have difficulty expressing. Often children struggle for words to help express themselves. There is great need to establish a language of feeling where children can confidently show how they feel and what they think about issues. The bonds that are generated by children when making art together can help to overcome marginalisation that children may suffer when they are HIV infected and affected. It is therefore important that the project aims to provide positive experiences for these children, building their self-esteem, self-expression and enabling the creation of a resource for themselves and their peers who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Projected Outcomes:

The end result of the project would be to strengthen the role played by childcare workers and art specialists in KwaZulu-Natal and beyond, thereby qualitatively improving interventions with vulnerable children. Furthermore, the project will provide for the transferral of skills that will contribute to the creation of empathetic environments where vulnerable children will benefit directly from the psychodynamic processes implicit in participatory creativity. Beneficiaries would include, community-based education and HIV/AIDS organisations in rural and urban communities as well as hospital school programmes and arts organisations that wish to develop children?’s art workshops.

Issues the project will address:

for a move away from conventional to more contemporary approaches to the emotional, social, physical and psychological wellbeing of children. One of the key participatory approaches would entail the implementation of skills and development programmes, which are an imperative factor in initiating the process of active child participation and the promotion of wellbeing for those touched by HIV/AIDS. Skills development becomes an essential pillar in addressing the needs of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, through community mobilisation that trains the trainers in community networks, empowering them to work within larger perimeters for successful implementation and in addressing key issues. In generating programmes that empower the community in life skills development, the training then takes a ripple effect as it imparts the skills acquired by trainer to the children.

Qualifications and experience of key project co-ordinators and facilitators:

Professional skills will be conveyed to trainees by a small team that will include: Bren Brophy, B Soc.Sci, UCT. Brophy is a Consultant Visual Arts Curator and Cultural Arts Project Co-ordinator with HIVAN. Eliza Moodley, BA (Hons) UND. Moodley is a researcher in participatory techniques and entertainment education with HIVAN. She is currently completing her Masters degree.

For more details on this project, please click on the hyperlink on the righthand side of this page.