Collaborative Portraits

Artfare Essentials is a week-long intensive workshop for community arts facilitators.
The workshop provided comprehensive and invaluable training in community-engaged arts, covering facilitation, conflict navigation, project planning, and cross-cultural collaboration. Participants explored arts-based research, interdisciplinary practices, and the historical legacies of initiatives like Jumblies, while learning to evaluate, document, and sustain creative projects for lasting impact.

As part of the education, we were invited to facilitate activities in groups for community participants through Arts4All -- my group guided members to share memories through expressive movement, a simple exercise with surprising emotional depth that was a joy to witness and participate in.

We also each facilitated an activity for the other workshop participants. I prepared for my activity during our break, drawing half-portraits of each of the participants in black pencil crayon on the paper table covers we had already been using for creative exploration. I then invited everyone to join me in taking up white pencil crayons to complete one of the portraits in any way they liked -- some chose to fill in the faces realistically and others opted for abstract imagery to express the energy of their subjects.

The activity was playful and lighthearted, sparking laughter and curiosity as we saw the diverse ways we interpreted each other, creating a fun and memorable moment of shared creativity.