ARTIST PROOF STUDIO
OUTREACH PROGRAMMES:
USING ART AND CRAFT TO PROMOTE SOCIAL CHANGE
Introduction
AIDS ACTION CAMPAIGN
Involving APS students to help them grow
Bringing awareness to communities through art
Building partnerships to extend our outreach
Bural partnerships with Phumani Paper
Artists in Schools
Vulnerable children and orphans
Income generation and the Ikageng project
Our unique and innovative approach
Artist Proof Studio has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to engaging with the issue of HIV/AIDS using the visual arts, since the launch of the Paper Prayers Awareness Campaign 1997. This campaign supported by the Ministry of Arts and Culture at the time reached thousands of people through skills workshops that culminated in National and regional World AIDS Day exhibitions over the nine South African Provinces. The Paper Prayers Campaign creates a supportive environment in which people gain awareness of the disease, produce an artistic gesture of compassion and healing in each paper prayer and learn useful skills towards financial empowerment.The Paper Prayers campaign is just one strategy APS employs to address the struggle against HIV/AIDS. Using visual arts training, cultural programmes, papermaking technology, printmaking, mapping, photo-voice and other Participatory Action research methodologies as a modality to create awareness and make an impact against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The concept of paper prayers originates from an ancient Japanese custom of offering painted strips of paper as prayers for healing the sick. Participants make a Paper Prayer, which is then exhibited and sold at World AIDS Day events. The process of producing these small works of art creates a supportive environment in which participants gain awareness of HIV/AIDS – this awareness is internalized and expressed in their artworks. We have found that engagement in HIV/AIDS issues provides an opportunity for our learners to give something back to their communities while gaining significant life and work experience. Furthermore, we have recognized that art and craft skills transfer to women in poor communities affected by HIV/AIDS can provide a vital source of income generation. This also empowers women and encourages them and their communities to develop a spirit of giving and healing and offering support to those who need it. They begin to see themselves and their contribution as part of the solution to coping with the impact of HIV/AIDS.
APSAIDS ACTION CAMPAIGN – An Advocacy Programme Supported By The Ford Foundation, Ackerman Foundation And The South Africa Development Fund
Since 1996 Artist Proof Studio has realized the enormous impact that the creative industries can make to address issues surrounding HIV/AIDS. This is a new outreach component that Artist Proof Studio is implementing in partnership with HIV/AIDS organizations.
In the light of this campaign, APS has developed a number of strategies for outreach including:
Involving APS students to help them grow:
Here, various initiatives directly involve APS learners. Our partnership with ‘Men as Partners’ has assisted us with providing training on gender sensitivity and HIV/AIDS awareness through this partnership; a mutually beneficial collaboration has evolved where our students produce relevant artworks in exchange for trainng. For example, they have created portable mural paintings depicting men in positive roles as fathers and husbands.
Bringing awareness to communities through art:
APS students have painted HIV/AIDS awareness and gender sensitivity messages on wall murals around the city of Johannesburg and Gauteng province. In 2008, our students worked with a partner NGO to design and paint murals expressing their outrage at the xenophobic attacks, which took place around South Africa in May/June 2008. One block-long mural was painted in Yeoville and another in Joubert Park. In March 2009, the third-year students collaborated with the Art Therapy Centre in an initiative to revamp the interior of The Memorial Institute of Child Health and Development.
Building partnerships to extend our outreach:
This programme has continued to evolve over time. Painting, photography and printmaking techniques have been used successfully to promote healing and encourage positive thinking. Workshops have also been held at APS for teenagers directly affected by HIV/AIDS. These have focused on issues around personal identity using art as a medium to express aspects of the self. Health workers and art therapists have also been brought in to facilitate these workshops. Partnerships have been developed with other non-profits such as the Art Therapy Centre, CARE (Community AIDS Response), and Engender Health (Men as Partners Project).
Rural partnerships with Phumani Paper
This participatory action research initiative, includes Photovoice and mapping workshops conducted in conjunction with our partners Phumani Paper and the University of Johannesburg. This joint partnership has been funded by the Ford Foundation as a five year project ending in 2010. Here, members of targeted communities affected by HIV/AIDS are given cameras to document places and people that are meaningful to them. The resulting images are then discussed by the whole group to highlight concerns that may not have been previously articulated or clarified. Methodological input from Michigan, Tufts, and Brandeis universities in the US as well as University of Johannesburg students has added to the learning from and impact of this project.
These interventions have reached 16 Phumani Paper enterprises. APS hopes to integrate this visual arts methodology into our curriculum and outreach programmes as another means of building awareness, assisting healing, and promoting activism.
Artists in Schools:
APS has developed a Paper Prayers training manual for teachers and schools. This effective approach introduces an art project linking the teaching of printmaking skills with HIV/AIDS awareness activities such as exhibitions and fundraisers. The success of this project has led to numerous requests from schools and NGOs to assist their efforts to educate children about HIV/AIDS through the visual arts.
Vulnerable children and orphans:
In 2008, APS developed a successful partnership with NOAH (Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity). APS graduates and interns provide art classes to orphans and vulnerable children at NOAH’s ‘arks’ and drop-in centres around Gauteng. In 2008, the project targeted four arks in Soweto. APS provides skills training and facilitation through our partnership with CDP (Curriculum Development Project) to prepare the artists to work with the children. This project is continuing in 2009.
Income generation and the Ikageng project:
More recently, Paper Prayers has launched a women’s income-generation unit. Together with a group of women from nearby townships, we have developed an exciting range of felt handmade animals and toys. APS staff and consultants as well as student interns become involved in product development and capacity building.
Our unique and innovative approach
Artist Proof Studio is unique in our highly innovative and successful approach to promoting social change through art and craft and in the direct linkages between our educational and outreach programmes. We are growing committed, skilled and professional artists who make meaningful contributions to our society. We constantly seek out new partners to work with us in these initiatives, either through funding support and/or implementing partnerships.
