PTC Weekly #4: Rainbow house and Jungle Speed

(No, this isn't a rave), it's our latest installment of PTC Weekly! In this week's article we talk houses, hoods and jungle speed :)

WEDDING

As you know, we are now hosting workshops, every Wednesday afternoon, at Voodoo55, our partner studio space in Wedding, and last week's theme was 'Neighbours'.

Voodoo55 is our first ever permanent workshop space, separate to the shelters that we visit, and we are super excited about the opportunity that this gives us for creative freedom, and collaboration. By offering regular art workshops to all children from the local area, we hope to create a community satellite, where refugee youth from the local shelters and kids who live in the surrounding neighborhood, can come together, in a safe and neutral space, to make art.

As this is only our first month, we are still building our numbers, but last week we had five children from the nearby Wedding shelter, and one child from outside the shelter. We were especially pleased to see Hayet, who lives in the local area, come back for her second week :)

As a way of consolidating, and creatively exploring this idea of community solidarity, we wished to explore the theme of "Neighbours". Last week, Maille came up with the concept, and prepared a large cardboard house, with windows that you can open, and cardboard figures to go inside. The children all worked together to paint their house, and the people to go inside the house- they had a lot of fun with this, and ended up painting all of the bricks different colours.

SPANDAU

At the moment in Spandau, there is a slightly funny atmosphere in the air; there are rumours that the shelter might be closing down, and there are a lot less people now living there. We wanted to lift the slightly subdued vibe, and bring everybody together, so we decided this week to make and create our own game of "Jungle Speed".

Ever heard of Jungle Speed? Well, basically, each player starts off with a certain number of cards, and the aim of the game is to get rid of all of your cards by grabbing the 'totem pole' (which we made out of rainbow paper!), which stands at the centre of the game, when your card matches with another player. Whoever grabs the pole first gives their cards to the other person. The person who loses all of their cards first, wins!

"The kids came up with their own symbols and drew them on the cards, then had a lot of fun playing together. They were even inspired to make their own versions of their favourite card games like Uno" - Volunteer, Stephanie Gillespie

This was a fun and light-hearted session which brought everyone together. Normally, in Spandau, we host our workshops within a large kids play area, and the children then decide if they would like to make art with us, or continue to play on their own. There are always some drifters who prefer to keep playing, but the Jungle Speed game attracted in a lot of the kids who don't normally like to join in, including some of the elder children.

Jafar, who is 11 years old, particularly enjoyed Jungle Speed, and was very good at snatching the totem pole! Jafar is normally quiet, and shy about joining in, so this was really lovely for us to see.

*** We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of PTC Weekly. Don't forget to 'like' and share on social media :) ***