Have you been “eager” to say but have no one to listen to, and words could not fully express what is going on inside you, and you’re not good at drawing?
This was the situation that Võ Nguyễn Ánh Tú – Tú Táo Tợn, the facilitator of the workshop “Exploring ourselves through the language of Collage” – found himself in. At that moment, Tú found his way to collage to both freely tell his story and “play” with images. In the workshop on 19.11, Tú presented the history of how this art was formed and developed, as well as several methods that allow anyone to join the activity, such as using dada poetry and bullet journal… Participants in the workshop then had the time to freely discover their own stories through a spontaneous collage using existing materials: newspapers, coloured papers, flyers, books, comic books, magazines… This activity not only excited children but also “drew in” grown-ups to join and get creative.
In the second part of the workshop, participants were divided into three groups and co-create big artworks under the theme: Why do we need preschool teachers? With this topic, Tú said that he did not prepare materials related to “teachers” or “preschool students” so that the teams’ creativity was not limited. The three teams were bustling with ideas that seemed familiar but were expressed in entirely different ways.
Collage is a tremendously potential technique that, through the process of searching, collecting, arranging, and making collages with diverse materials, we can visualise and express the world in our imagination, exploring the connections between random elements and practising multimedia art. Therefore, by working with collages, teachers will acquire more inspiration and amazing discoveries with materials, images, layouts, while also gaining more experience with the continuous creative and exploration journey in children in preschool classes. Several participants said that they were intrigued by this technique, one that they had heard before but didn’t know could be such vast and creativity-stimulating.
At the end of the workshop, the three teams completed their large-scale artworks, with different thoughts/perspectives, responding to the question Why do we need preschool teachers? Võ Nguyễn Ánh Tú hoped that this simple technique will help people explore themselves, “seeing what we can’t see with our eyes and can’t describe with words” and continue the practice in the future.
If you took part in this workshop co-hosted by VFCD and VIRES, don’t forget to check out the pictures from the event below and send us your feedback through this short survey: https://bit.ly/3tIP7a3
