Finland Team’s first workshop

The Drawing Together Project’s first Finnish workshop was successfully made on the 28th November 2020. Adhering to local COVID-19 rules, fifteen participants gathered with us at the Tampere University campus for a day of creativity.

The participants each brought with them an object that symbolises the relationship between themselves and another person that makes them feel well in the present. Guided by a local art therapist (brought in because our art therapists from ArtRefuge could not come due to international travel restrictions), the participants made a mixed media artwork about the object and its meaning, using techniques such as collage, painting and drawing.

Each artwork was photographed several times in different stages of completion, allowing for short animations to be made of the work’s progression. Afterwards, each participant was invited to present their artwork to the group. Some participants gave short explanations, while others chose to tell longer stories of the objects they had brought, or the people those objects related to. The short and long stories gave moving accounts of relationships that made the participants feel well in the present.

The workshop was filmed and recorded by Petter Korkman from TIUKU Ry. Petter will produce a series of documentary across the three countries in the project. The workshop space was carefully arranged so that only participants who chose to appear in the film, either identifiable or not, were filmed.

Grateful for the opportunity to conduct the workshop face-to-face, we now eagerly follow our colleagues in Norway and Scotland as they organize their workshops remotely.