July workshops

This July at Express Yourself, we had the opportunity to work intensively together for a week of creation and collaboration. This was different than the more spread out structure of our earlier workshops, and was a chance to build on ideas and skills from day to day, and connect as a group.

We continued our exploration of expressing identity through art, starting off the week by making an incredible collection of prize ribbons. Each ribbons represents something unique and meaningful about it's creator. I love how many of the ribbons honour components of out identity that we might not usually share or celebrate, like "messy" and "shy." Collected together, they make an interesting portrait of our group:

We continued this theme through personal collage creation:

We explored the connection between identity and place, building a collaborative web/map of places, and then making hand-drawn postcards of places that have shaped and impacted who we are:

Objects were another way into our exploration. Each participant brought in an object that represents an important aspect of their identity. We used photos of the objects to make oil pastel prints, and compiled them into a collaborative collection:

Continuing our learning about visual storytelling, we made comics inspired by stories about ourselves, and skills and interests we want to share:

We also started discussing our legacy project, which will be displayed in the library this fall. We brainstormed possibilities for how to format and present our artwork, and then held a voting process to narrow down our choices. We will continue the legacy creation process when we re-unite in September!

On the final day of our July workshop series, we reflected on our week together and each participant shared a word to describe their experience:

(If you're wondering what "Slay Monkey" means, it was an ongoing joke in reference to this amazing and terrifying collaborative drawing):

For me, this week was inspiring and rewarding. We found more and more opportunities to work together as a group, have meaningful conversations about creativity, identity, and our differences/similarities, and I saw growing confidence in many participants. I am excited for the upcoming final leg of this project!