In spring 2017, ten primary school children, who are looked after in the afternoons at the KindElternZentrum Lieskau, worked together with the two Halle artists Inga Becker and Suse Kaluza in a six-month project as part of the “Culture makes you strong” program.
The special thing about this art project was raising awareness of the fact that you can not only buy working materials, but also make them yourself. Based on this beautiful idea, the two artists designed a project for after-school children that focused on the production of charcoal, chalk and other materials. It all started in February with paper-making. In March, wood was burned to make charcoal and the stretcher frames were nailed together. Using hammer and nail, they continued the following week to stretch the canvases onto the frames. In a pre-Easter atmosphere, the primary school children mixed egg tempera paints in blue, yellow and red from egg, rapeseed oil and color pigments. In April, we then made chalk together. And of course they also drew and painted in between! Some of the artworks created can now be found on postcards, which are available to take away from our office.
The project was conceived and realized by the designers Inga Becker and Suse Kaluza from the studio community kunstrichtungtrotha. The project was made possible by the funding program “Kultur macht stark – Bündnisse für Bildung”, which is financed by the Ministry of Education and Research and coordinated by the Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler (BBK). The project sponsor at local level was the Saxony-Anhalt Professional Association of Visual Artists (BBK Saxony-Anhalt), which joined forces with Villa Jühling and the KindElternZentrum Lieskau.
