THE ROBOT AND THE GHOST
19 2nd- to 6th-grade students at La Arboleda school, Valle de Trápaga-Trapagaran
Teachers: María Begoña Pasarín and Ana María Vega Igelmo
Artist: Elssie Ansareo
What is mythology? What is a mythological character? What are its features? The stories behind these figures and their symbolic value were analyzed and debated. Students were then invited to invent their own characters. Together, they chose and agreed on the characters: a ghost and a robot. They imagined their particular features and came up with a narrative that linked them together.
A number of games were used to create the characters: automatic drawing as a tool to start creating, playful transformation of what we know and mixing diverse elements to generate hybrids, fantastic creatures and new configurations with geometric shapes. Sketches were made of what these characters might look like, and three of the almost fifty drawings were chosen. The three characters chosen by consensus were then made into a large-scale installation.
Ana Maria Vega Igelmo, a teacher at La Arboleda, defined the experience as follows:
“The children are delighted and thrilled. They learned to use different mediums and ways of doing things. Until now at the school maybe we’ve focused more on using temperas and paints, but because this project was about designing and thinking in order to do different things, the activity takes them out of their routine, out of the usual art activities. So we can see that they are super happy: they can’t wait until Friday, when Elssie comes.”
One of the students explained this experience:
“My favorite time of the workshop was when we made the robot. I loved everything we did, because I’ve learned to invent things, like a robot and a ghost, with all of their traits and their stories. Ramón the Robot likes to play tennis and poker, he builds homes, lives in a castle and dances sevillanas. And he’s good friends with the ghost. The robot lives in China and the ghost in La Arboleda.”