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DIGICEL gets on board with “Young @ Art” summer programme
Communications giant DIGICEL has unveiled plans to launch a summer art programme for kids and has offered a $500,000 donation to the programme.
The programme will use a variety of activities designed to encourage children to use their imagination while still developing other skill sets. Called “The Young @Art” the programme focuses on the theatre and visual arts as the media for introducing the children to the arts. According to the Programme organisers, the children “will develop confidence in previously explored skills and techniques while using a variety of media.
Emphasis will be placed on individual development and experimentation.
Digicel’s Tamara Clarke (right) presents the cheque to Co-ordinator of the “Young @ Art” Programme Colette Jones-Chin in the presence of Public Relations Manager Shonnet Moore yesterday.
Aimed at giving the children the ability to indulge in a new form of creative thinking, the objectives of the programme are to help the children develop a range of creative and academic skills as well as to build their self-confidence and ability to express themselves. The intention being that participation in the programme will supplement a child’s ability to perform at school and other activities. And of course the programme organisers want all of the children to enjoy themselves, this being the primary objective in addition to learning.
During the sessions dedicated to the Visual Arts, the children will be able to partake in activities centered around ceramics, collages, wire bending and mask making, graphic arts which will include card making and cartooning and finally decorative craft. The Ceramic activity is called the Fly sky highclay workshop, the theme for the collage is ‘A collage of summer, painted!’ and the wire bending and face masking has the children designing and making their own costumes.
The Drama Sessions will include improvisational theatre where the children will be encouraged to think on their feet by being given a topic after which they will be engaged in dialogue based on the topics. During the Expression and Movement Sessions the students will be taught basic dance movements both choreographed and freestyle. There will be a puppet theatre where not only acting skills but those learned in the visual arts sessions will be employed. And since speaking is such an important part of drama, voice projection and elocution will be taught along with a teaching/performing forum called the Readers’ Theatre where the children are taught to develop reading fluency, which goes towards improvements in comprehension.
And of course the children will not learn all of these skills nor make all these works of art without an opportunity to showcase them. At the end of the programme, each child will receive a certificate of participation as well as see their works featured in a Tea Party, Children’s Theatre and Art Exhibition at the Umana Yana on July 30, 2011. The exhibition will be for adults as well as the children.
All a parent needs to do is have their child registered at Raphael’s Daycare in Charlotte Street, which is where the workshops will be undertaken.
The kids will be in classes from 9am to 2pm with a mid-morning and lunch break from Monday, July 11 to Friday, July 29.
Co-ordinator of the “Young @ Art” Programme Collette Jones-Chin displays some of her work during the presentation ceremony yesterday.
Heading the programme is Mrs. Collette Jones-Chin who has studied art at the Burrowes School of Art, the University of Guyana and the Mount Allison University in Sackville, Canada. She has spent time working in St. Vincent, Anguilla, Grenada, Curacao and Suriname through the Organization of American States (OAS). Mrs. Jones-Chin has also worked as an art educator, a costume designer, a motivational speaker and an art therapist where she provided therapy through art to delinquent children as well as convicted felons and prisoners.
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