Calligram workshops for children

Creative calligraphy workshops, using graphics, movement, writing, music and digital technology, for two elementary school classes in Charleville-Mézières. Half a day per class.

Poetry in the classroom?

A poet comes into a classroom. How can we make sure that a wind of freedom, creativity and discovery blows, so that the arrival of this outside person is a real breath of fresh air?

The method I used with these two groups of children can be seen in several features, which I summarize here:

• Start by reconfiguring the room, in a “U” shape, so that everyone sees each other. We do it together. We therefore symbolize, by transforming the place together, other modalities of activities and relationships.
• Bring tools (200g paper and thick black markers), so that everyone’s attention is immediately focused on making, and that the first interaction is a drawing, a concrete action.
• At each step, participants close their eyes, visualize what they are going to write or draw on the paper, before doing it.
• With a “steel drum” placed in the middle of the room, I propose to the children, one after the other, to make a musical “gong”, then to give the instructions to the others: close their eyes, take the time to breathe, visualize, reopen, then they play the music while everyone draws, including the adults (myself included). So I give them the mediation technique, and they are the ones who drive.
• We first create a line that separates the sheet in two, and we show each other our sheets.
• Then, we make a circle on one side of the line (with a child who comes to make music, to ask us to close our eyes, etc., as each time we put the felt pen on the sheet), then a line which has an emotion, then its favorite letter, then the same word, written each one in its own way, then the most important word for each one, and so on, on different sheets that we give them. Each time, we take the time for a child to make the music and guide the group to visualize with their eyes closed, concentrate, and then create.
• At several moments, we come to put the sheets on the ground, to connect them to each other, to circulate around, to feel the collective sense that it gives. The body in movement. We also connect the leaves with the line, which creates a kind of common path, creating a kind of animal, whose existence we discover together, amazed. The letters are displayed next to each other in the corridor, forming a large mysterious word.
• Also, I place a camera which films the ground, which broadcasts the image in direct, and at a moment, one will come the ones after the others to place the sheets to come to fill the image. We do it, then we watch the film, which makes us see things differently. The teacher will keep the film.
• One also draws our most important words on large A3 sheets very thick (200 grams).
• The principle is that each act is made by giving importance to the very simple things. We invest, we take the time. Thus, there was not a single “discipline problem”.
• And after the session, the person in charge of culture, Myriam Houdard, who accompanies the project will display the students’ creations in the window of the city museum, trying to reproduce, thanks to the photos, what was done in class. The students will visit the poetry biennial the following week. They were told at the beginning that their work was going to be public, which gave them a stake.

An adventure for everyone

Writing a simple word, each in his or her own way, became a collective adventure, in which each step was an emotional and sensory experience, without judging “good” or “bad”, without evaluation. The challenge was to play together, supervisors and children, to progress, to mutually enrich each other. When, after having drawn a picture, some of the children had not “respected the instructions”, what I was sending back was that it was rich for the others, by this difference, this departure from the framework.

My principle is to set up a framework that allows for mutual enrichment. I am not the one who “knows”, I am the one who “authorizes”. I myself, for reasons of personal biography, was that day in a very great sorrow, an extremely close mourning, in time and in the link. I was afraid of not being able to “connect” with others. When several children told me that their most important word was the name of a deceased pet or grandparent, who they thought about all the time... suddenly, a powerful reconnection, which brought me profound goodness, took place.

Thanks to this sincere creative sharing, I came out of this day nourished, joyful, and filled with a life force that I did not have in me at all in the morning. The teachers, the children and the cultural mediator also gave me feedback on their experiences of joy and meaning from this shared experience. I believe that it is essential to let oneself be initiated by the encounter.