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Children - Art - and Creativity |
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The
pedagogic principles in Ghassan Kanafani Cultural
Foundation's kindergartens, habilitation
kindergartens for children with disabilities, children's libraries, and
art workshops are all based on the holistic approach to children's
development. We consider each child as an individual as well as an inseparable
part of the surrounding environment, which he/she lives and functions
in. All the activities in the our facilities support this holistic
approach through an integration process, emphasizing the importance of
creativity and art in the pedagogic process. Through the years, we
have developed a visual pedagogic program, which gives the children
the opportunity for creative self-realization in a positive and
constructive manner in the midst of the post civil war destructive
surroundings. GKCF's Project: Children -Art
and Creativity started in 1995 with a four months intensive training program
(220 hours) and the preparation of 12 pedagogues chosen from
the regular fulltime staff in six of GKCF's kindergartens and two of
the
habilitation
kindergartens for children with disabilities. Since then has art and creativity
become a very important part of our everyday work with the children.
one exciting development has been the integration of blind and
mentally challenged children in the artistic activities. The trained
instructors have been responsible for establishing small or large
ateliers, independently from the rest of the kindergartens. Every year, and at the end the school year, the art instructors organize an exhibition of the children's art work in our kindergartens and libraries. Parents and other family members, in addition to children, instructors, and collogues from other institutions and organizations participate in these arrangements. For
the last two years, the DanChurchAid,
in cooperation with the European Union, has been supporting our Children -Art and Creativity project. They have sponsored the Danish/Palestinian
art instructor, who has been leading the project, in addition to
covering the salary payments for the ten pedagogues, who since have
been responsible for all the art activities in the foundation's
kindergartens and libraries. Back
to top During the summer of
2000, we in the GKCF decided to work on a self-portrait project with
children aged 5 to 6 and a small group of older, mentally disabled
children. The subject, both educationally and artistically, is not
new, but nevertheless of great visual, psychological and emotional
importance because it deals with identity. The main aim of the project
was for the children to express, visually and verbally, their self
perception and their perception of, and identification with, the world
they live in and interacts with. The children participating in this
project all attend The Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation's
kindergartens in six different Palestinian refugee camps, suburban and
rural areas in The title of the book
is a simile by one of the children, Alaa Al-Asaad, expressing a
feeling of extreme eagerness and happiness. Throughout the project,
the children's eagerness for observing, experimenting and expressing
themselves, was inspirational. Therefore the title of the book had to
be, as these wonderful children are, like Roses in the wind. Click
here to view an extract from the book. The
initial idea was to exhibit the children's work, but we also felt that
this experience should be documented in a book form to offer a
testimony to the existence and identity of fourth generation
Palestinian refugee children.
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