Imagine Me with Praxis Foundation in Mysore, India

Kashyap imagined an 'Ice Dragon' in Finland. He strongly believes that there still are massive dragons, like those of yore, hiding deep in the frozen forests and mountains in Finland. 

Janak started with the idea of making a female 'Yeti', he spoke a lot about it and finally got to the make Yeti instead.   

Shayan is from Maldieves, and is quite fascinated with the Indian traditions,  so he made this marriage couple fully decorated puppet.  This is the kind of wedding that he wants to have!!!

Laisa is attracted to water like a fish, when on field trips she refuses to get out of the water hole. Her favorite animal is a fish. She has a lovely fish tank at home and takes care of all the fish pretty well.  She started making a mermaid but then changed her mind to make a fish puppet. 

Taara is found of animals, expecially dino's, she had recently watched the Jurassic world with her parents and wanted to make a 'Steggi' puppet, this dino is a friendly, grass eating dino that helps humans when they are lost in the forest. 

Taara also made a 'Jolly Dolphin' which is, according to her the princess of the ocean.  That is why her skin is all shining and glowing.  Like the dino the dolphin in a friendly creature who speaks with children and plays with them on the beach.  Jolly even takes children for a free ride on the waves.   

Manjunath is fascinated by the traditional Dasara Festival that happened in Mysore in October and wanted to reproduce the heavily decorated animals that were paraded around the Mysore Palace on the 10th of October.  He particularly liked the veeerytall donkeys and farming oxen that were paraded.  These animals were brought into Mysore especially for the Dasara Festival from the northern part of Karnataka state.  

Manha is a 6 year old girl child who loves DORA and here adventures, she believes that she is on a wild trip with DORA while making the puppet. She was all chatty and explaining to the rest of them the things that she and her friend were together discovering together.  

Sharil was horrified by the Dasara Puppets that were on display for 10 days in Mysore and which were burnt down to indicate the victory of Good over Evil.  She wanted to share this demon character from the Ramayana (Hindu Mythology) who kidnaps a King called Rama's wife to an island which is today's SriLanka, with all her friends in Finland.  She has a message as well BEWARE!!!!!!!

Kishore is a Class II child who is always looking for something interesting.  Recently he discovered the story of Ganesha, who was punished by his own father but saved by his mother. Ganesha is his most favourite character from the Indian Children's Stories.  Kishore believes that Ganesha can read and write at great speed because of his large head and long trunk.  He thinks that Ganesha can also listen to two people at the same time because he has elephant ears. 

Nandana is a Grade I child and her friend is a flying witch. This friend of her's is a special witch as she is able to fly around the whole world with Nandana on her back. So Nandana comes to school even flying on her back!!!  

Palguni made this humming bird puppet, which is carrying a pretty dried twig to build its nest.  Palguni was on a field trip from school where she saw a lot of bee-eaters making nest on tall coconut trees. She was inspired by this and wanted to make a humming bird puppet which she finds very colorful.

The artists from Praxis Foundation in Mysore, India are making and sharing art with the 4-5 year old Dynamic Dinosaurs from Açı Preschool in Istanbul, Turkey.

"IMAGINE ME" India and Finland are friends!

 "Imagine a friend, a counterpart to you in far away Finland, Imagine the looks of this friend, the things that she/he likes, where she/he studies, with whom she/he lives, where she/he studies, how she/he spends free time and so on and so forth. Now we need to recreate this FRIEND in the materials provided."

Initially there were questions as to how big the creation should be and depending on the materials we decided to make masks of the FINLAND Friends and improvise on them at a later point in time.    

Project Implementation: Each student paired up with one teacher for assistance and worked on the masks. The discussions during the process of making the masks were quite interesting and revealing the thought processes of children involved. There were a lot of questions about Finland itself, how far it was, how big it was, and was it a cold country? And how tall were people etc, etc,.  As a response to the queries, one teacher browsed the net for information on Finland andshared it with students. Students started to relate the conditions to their own context here and started the project on that note. 

To read the full report on the workshop and to see pictures of the amazing artworks, please click here.

Leena Pascal and her talented group of artists and teachers at Praxis Foundation in Mysore, India are making and sharing art with Eliisa Sorvali and her artists at Annantalo in Helsinki, Finland.

Imagining our puppet self

Greetings from Annantalo, a children's art house in Helsinki Finland!  We are an art class that goes by the name Let´s paint!. We are happy to be part of Dear You art project! 

The children are 9-12 years old and we are meeting every Tuesday. Here are our puppets!

Eliisa Sorvali

Eliisa Sorvali and her group of artists in Helsinki, Finland are making and sharing art with the artists from Praxis School in Mysore, India.

K1 and their adventurous imaginary friends!

What fun K1 had making our Imagine Me puppets for our new friends in Vietnam!  We first looked at the map of the globe and came up with all different ways of how one could travel from Finland to Vietnam. Aashrit was so thoughtful and said we could spend one night in his home in India. India is a bit of a detour from Finland, but we can make it happen!

We then thought about what kind of companion we would like to go on our adventure with. This friend would then be developed into our Imagine Me puppet. From the looks of these artworks, K1 is a creative bunch who are ready an exciting journey! As you can see, collaging came quite naturally for them too.

J made a Micky Mouse bumblebee. 
KS likes to surprise his puppet by saying, "boo!". His friend likes to jump and drive a car.
A said, "this is my happy face!".
S's friend can read everything and do what people can't do like twist his legs, take his hair off and put it back on. Oh, and he has sharp teeth.
Dsri gave hers a purple dress.
W named his friend Mark. Mark likes to read ten-ten books, has a beard, glasses, hands, feet, and is good at running.
F's new friend, Sarah, is happy! She likes running around, jumping, skipping, and puzzles.
AA's friend is named Nosey. Nosey is good at connecting the phones and also playing with legos and cooking.
N's bumblebee transformer can transform fast cars and motorcycles!
M's is called No Name.
K's imaginary friend is a boy.
D created a baby.
R's has a happy face and her name is Happy.
AN's is called Baby Andreas and he likes playing with toys.

We can't wait to meet our new friends from Vietnam!

With love,
K1 artists, Arlene, & Lydia

K1, 4 year old artists from International School of Helsinki in Finland are making and exchanging art with the Tigers, a group of 4 year olds from Just Kids School in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Crazy Good Friends from Vienna coming your way!

The children had lot of fun with creating a good friend and they made really funny pictures!

A good friend should be lovely and funny. They want to do crazy things with a best friend. And it is very important to play with each other.  As you can see on the pictures, friends also have animals.

Hope, you are fine and wish you the best,
Simone Zobl and her group of super creative 2nd graders

The 7-8 year old artists from  Evangelischen Volksschule am Karlsplatz in Vienna, Austria are making and exchanging art with the 8 years from Mooste Põhikool in Mooste, Estonia!

Who wouldn't wanted to be art pals with the artists in Canada?!!

Kaarina Losey, the 6th grade teacher at Pioneer Park P.S. in Ontario, Canada shares with us how they approached 'Imagine Me' project. 

"I had talked briefly a day or two ahead of time, that we would be "art pals" with another class about the same age as us in Finland.  They were encouraged to bring in any materials that they wanted to use specifically. 

The morning of we talked a bit about imaginary friends, kind of following the outline in the project and I had this at the beginning of a short Google Slide show I had created a showing images of different styles and forms of puppet making (bags, sticks, tubes, etc.)."

The slideshow Kaarina created is quite impressive and an art piece in itself! Please have a look by clicking here.  Thank you, Kaarina!  I know that the 5th graders from The English School in Helsinki, Finland are very excited to meet their new friends!!

The creative buzz at Viertolan koulu

When the students from Maija's class at Viertolan koulu started to draw their ideas of"imaginary friends"  all of them were really quiet and concentrated! Ooh that silence meant creativity was busy! The students were thinking of their friends in Denmark and of how they will react when they get Finnish imaginary friends in the mail!

During the artistic process the students noticed that their idea was developing and changing while they were starting to build their puppets. "Game man" got hair to puppet and one of the puppets even turned out to be a mask and a puppet!

Eliisa

The 3rd Grade artists from Viertolan Koulu in, Vantaa, Finland are making and sharing art with the 3rd Grade artists from Korsholm Skole  in Hinnerup, Denmark.