The diversity of projects funded by the Arts & Culture Trust ranges from urban renewal to art therapy, multi-media and book illustration. We look at five successful concepts
Ntuthuko Maphumulo
In the past few years the Visual Arts and Crafts Academy (Vaca) has played an important role in helping young learners cope with their traumatic experiences of violence.
Last year Vaca was involved in three projects to aid teachers and care workers to help children who were affected by violence and had experienced trauma to express themselves through art and crafts and also to learn life skills.
Art therapy for community workers and educators at the Tsepong stimulation centre in Katlehong was one of the projects. The project involved training 16 community care workers and educators to explore how violence impacted on learning. The training skills imparted on the teachers included how to work effectively with learners who have experienced violence and trauma as well as deal with their own experiences of trauma.
The teachers also learned ways of creating some space in classrooms where children learn to deal with their emotional and physical abuse through expressing themselves in art and crafts.
Loren Kaplan of Vaca said: “The focus of art therapy training is not about producing beautiful objects, but about the process involved in making the work.”
The teachers and care workers of the project are continually being supervised by the art therapy trainers and mainly deal with children from primary schools.
Kaplan said there was an increase in the children’s confidence and ability to express themselves and to learn to trust people around them.
The second project included training 14 teachers who learned how to use art to help integrate learners in the classroom. This is after the Department of Education introduced a policy to integrate disabled and mainstream learners.
Two primary schools were involved in the pilot project to integrate grade one learners : Sibonile primary for the blind in Klipriver and Brauns primary school for sighted learners.
Vaca was involved in training the teachers in integration methods using art and craft. The training of the teachers focused on art as a vehicle for the development of life skills.
The Katlehong school for the deaf and blind has employed a teacher, who is assisted by Vaca, in skills development in art. The teacher helps the students in one of their art subjects painting and in the past year all those students doing art as a subject had a 100% pass rate.
Kaplan said: “All the projects have been successful but their sustain-ability is dependent on funding.”
The Visual Arts and Crafts Academy’s projects are currently being funded by Swedish international development agency Kulturhuset, Arts & Culture Trust and the National Arts Council