Collage
Other forms of art.
Collage
Collage is an art technique in which you use pre existing material such as pieces of paper or cloth, but also cut outs from news papers or magazines to make a new visual composition and by doing this telling a story.
Especially while working with children or people who can not express themselves well in words, collage is an interesting technique. Instead of using only words to write down their views, on a piece of white paper, they may chose picutres they like, which represent their views and feelings. Making the collage, discussing during the making process and after that discussing about the collage, gives possibilities to collect stories for narrative accountability purposes. A collection of these materials and the sense making of them are the basis of a narrative account and for narrative accountability as a practice. This is all material to make a common story.
Material Needed:
-Magazines, newspaper, pieces of paper or other materials,
-Glue
-Scissors for all
- Sticky notes or pieces of paper and pens
-Canvas or paper to make the collage upon.
ã Sandra Geelhoed, try-out January 2023
Training step by step
Step 1. Put a rich collection of different types of magazines on a table.
Step 2. Propose a topic or ask people to formulate a common question they wish to visualize and exchange view points about. In NACCS project we asked children of Kids of Amsterdam why the organization is important to them and what it means for them to move to a new location.
Step 3. Work on individual collage. Have people make cut outs of magazines and news papers, letters, significant words.
Step 4. Look at eachothers art works.
Make small groups max 3. What story do you see in the art work of the others? Write down in silence and stick your stories it to a big poster. Listen to the stories of the makers, that are represented. Do the stories correspond to what you saw? What is it that you saw differently? What was in common?
Step 5. Whole group.
What can we learn from the similarities and differences between the stories that are visualized around the same topic? What did this way of storytelling mean to the makers? How can we make sense of the ways participants represented the topic in their collage? Did we see and interpret what the maker meant to show? Do we have a common view on the topic we wished to visualize in collage?
Keep a trace of the conversations about the general topic with either sticky notes or photo/audio/video.
Step 6. Collect collage and stories
Ask permission to use the collages and stories for the making of a common story for narrative accountability purposes.