In December 2011, I visited Siem Reap, Cambodia, to deliver short art projects to children.
Working at the Grace House Community Centre, an NGO supported by the volunteer network Globalteer, I taught four one-hour lessons per day over two weeks. During my stay, I worked with about 150 children through a variety of art projects, including drawing, painting, installation, and shadow puppetry.
The main project aimed to introduce students to abstract art and involved showing them Andy Goldsworthy’s work. The children were asked to collect natural objects from their local area to create temporary sculptures with their found materials. Once happy with their installation, the children, who ranged in age from 6 to 15, were given a frame to create an interesting composition on their sculpture and then asked to draw that abstraction on a large sheet of paper. The final stage was to create a monochromatic painting of their drawing.
For the younger kindergarten students, projects involved collage based on shapes, colours and fruits they were learning in their English language classes.
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