CREATIVE JOURNEYS
This part of our project was sponsored by University of Cambridge and supported by Peterborough City Council in the context of its Integrated Communities Strategy and its Think Community initiative. Our goal was, in part, to show the value of arts-led practice in helping to build community and also to show how arts-led thinking can be used innovatively to reflect upon community building. The Thursday Club is one of a number of local community initiatives to bring people together that has been supported by the PCC Communities Fund
Everyone has a story (or many stories) to tell; but those in power and with resources need to hear them! Because storytelling is an art – whether the stories are factual or fictional, they can be told in endless different ways with different results; some ways might be more empowering; if we experiment with telling our story in different ways we might see things differently; or be seen differently.
This drawing activity sought to demonstrate how simple creative activities can facilitate story telling in different ways. Using the art materials provided, participants were invited by Art practitioner Annabel Lee to ‘take a line for a walk’ and re-imagine the journey that participants took to get to the Thursday Club.
Annabel talked about Scottish painter and musician Alan Davie (1920 – 2014) and capturing feelings, thoughts, ambitions and dialogue in colour, form. She explained To explain how he uses symbols, e.g. arrows, ladders, boomerangs, swirls, blobs, oblongs, splatters…. to encourage thought about what these might mean… what colours might mean… how these meanings aren’t fixed… how the combination is playful, dynamic.
Working with a partners, participants were invited to take a piece of lining paper. On this was imagined the world “in which you would like to live in five- or ten-years’ time”. Taking turns with partners in making marks on the page with one of the thick paintbrushes they chose symbols as used by painter Alan Davie or made up their own. The ‘palette’ was restricted to the use of black, white and two further colours. Symbols and the colours were imagined to represent obstacles, worries, victories, journies.
