Light – Colour – Action!

A Community Art Day of cosiness and creativity through paper craft at Forgan Arts Centre hosted by ArtMovesFife and funded by Fife Communities Climate Action Network in collaboration with Climate Ready South East Scotland.  

The arts can provide ways into communities, drawing on the understanding of local artistic practitioners using creative ways to frame issues and draw people into conversation. It is hoped that the workshops can help develop networks and trusting relationships that are essential for engaging audiences meaningfully.

What can you expect?

The aim for the day is that we create a warm and welcoming space together, to imagine future possibilities through shared stories of community, conversation, and creative making.

Artists Kate Downie & Gillian McFarland will work with the local population attendees in the making of an illuminating 3-D paper community of observation, memory, imagination, and possibilities for the future. This will take the final form of a tabletop or floor installation constructed of folded paper houses, landscapes, coastlines, and maps which can be rearranged, reconstructed, rebuilt, photographed and documented. Participants can then take their artwork away with them. However, there is the possibility that the work could be gathered for one very large installation and exhibited in a public space to engage community members who could not make the workshop.

Utilising the Turkish Map fold, collage techniques, paper and card templates and simple mapping drawings of the local area, locally known places will come alive in new and creative ways. We like the idea of working with light (rechargeable tealights) to ‘transform’ the installation particularly on a dark January night. It will serve as a good metaphor for positive community actions.

The workshop will work to encourage participants to connect in thinking about ways that climate links to other issues in ways that may not be immediately obvious. Coming together creatively can be an effective way of engaging with more nuanced and diverse ways of understanding climate change. The arts encompass ambiguity and unresolved questions that do not have easy answers. The workshop will look to empower and help community participants understand a diversity of perspectives, providing a way to build confidence and social capital, allowing all to participate in work on climate matters and advocate for change and access to influence policy.

What do you need to bring?

All you need to bring is your thoughts on favourite places, where you live, maybe where you go to walk, sit, or the journeys you make.

Wear warm clothing as the day will include some moving outside along the nature trail or in the garden. Please let us know if you have accessibility issues and we will try to facilitate.

Please bring a packed lunch if you plan to stay over lunchtime.

Accessibility

All ages – Families and children welcome.

Please let Forgan Arts Centre know if you have accessibility issues in advance

The finished collaborative creation will be exhibited at the FCCAN Gathering in March at Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries