Kosovo
In 2009 members of ArtsAction Group were introduced to a dynamic community center, Fellbach-Haus Creative Educational Centre, located in Suhareka/Theranda, Kosovo. From that initial introduction has emerged an ongoing partnership that continues today.
Starting with our first project, Building Bridges to Connect Los Angeles, New York City, and Suhareka, Kosovo, ArtsAction Group along with Refki Gollopeni, Mejtim Bytyçi, and Ismet Suka, continue to co-design and produce community arts workshops with children and youth.
Starting with our first project, Building Bridges to Connect Los Angeles, New York City, and Suhareka, Kosovo, ArtsAction Group along with Refki Gollopeni, Mejtim Bytyçi, and Ismet Suka, continue to co-design and produce community arts workshops with children and youth.
Centre for Creative Education Fellbach Haus
We continue to expand upon the art and design work from prior years with a focus on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, ART and math), design thinking and interactive art and design. Digital media is recognized as a potential economic growth lever for the youth and young adults in the community. Moveover, arts and culture are seen as crtiical components of community development in the municipality. We explore these possibilities through project-based learning at the centre as well as through partnerships with children and youth in the USA. Check out our work in the annual overviews below.
2024 Imagining Place: Mapping New Worlds
Exhibition night
Since the beginning of civilization, we have looked to the skies to navigate our way, know when to plant for seasons of sustenance, and dream of new futures to flourish.
This year's artwork and final exhibition focused on the themes of place and world making. We created, with the children and youth, an immersive multi-sensory installation. Different aspects of the art included high- and low-tech kinetic drawing machines created by a team of robotics students, animations created by the youth, large-scale video projections with audio linked to the theme, and placed throughout the space, an entire range of handcrafted illuminated, symbolic plant, insect and animal life created by all of the participants. The workshops culminated with community members, the young people and their families coming together to explore, experience and celebrate this newly imagined world.
This year's artwork and final exhibition focused on the themes of place and world making. We created, with the children and youth, an immersive multi-sensory installation. Different aspects of the art included high- and low-tech kinetic drawing machines created by a team of robotics students, animations created by the youth, large-scale video projections with audio linked to the theme, and placed throughout the space, an entire range of handcrafted illuminated, symbolic plant, insect and animal life created by all of the participants. The workshops culminated with community members, the young people and their families coming together to explore, experience and celebrate this newly imagined world.
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Process and final exhibition photos
2023 Freedom to...Liria për...
Group mural with fluorescent markers and paint.
We returned to Kosovo after a 3 year hiatus! The theme, chosen by our partners at Fellbach Haus was Freedom to...Liria për... We were inspired by a desire to continue with the STEAM workshops via small kinetic sculptures, animation and exploring the science behind fluorescent light and color. We also wanted to celebrate our reunion with our Kosovar family and designed the curriculum around the themes of play and celebration.
This years exhibition included guests from the US Embassy, past and current mayors of Suhareka/Theranda, Albanian Culture TV, and the many young people who participated in the workshops, with their families.
We are grateful for our partner, Refki Gollopeni and Albanian Culture TV for facilitating the video, providing an overview of the workshops.
This years exhibition included guests from the US Embassy, past and current mayors of Suhareka/Theranda, Albanian Culture TV, and the many young people who participated in the workshops, with their families.
We are grateful for our partner, Refki Gollopeni and Albanian Culture TV for facilitating the video, providing an overview of the workshops.
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2019 Transformimi: Dikur, Tani Dhe Nesër/Transformation: Past, Present, Future
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All of us participate in a range of different communities in our daily lives – families in all of their variations, friends, work and more. We also have special gifts that can be shared within, among, and across these communities. This year our starting point was a single question: What is your special gift? This simple initial question was the starting point for a range of art, design and technology project explorations.
For the younger students we worked with a contemplative meditation activity where they were asked to silently name their special gift(s) and to embody this gift in their bodies through an action pose. The youth used this prompt as an entry way into creating collaborative video pieces. Mixed-media relief prints using photography, greenscreen and collage were created by the children. Each print is a window into a complex, layered story where they illustrate their gifts in action. |
Working across digital media, including video mapping, film, sound, and greenscreen, the youth created a series of photos and short videos to explore their selves and gifts through the prism of past, present, and future. The work was projected onto three exterior walls of the Museum of Education as well as in the interior, which also included an exhibition of the children’s artwork.
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Video produced by Barrie Maguire, Sr.
2018 Outside In/Inside Out: Nga Jasht Mbrenda / Nga Mbrenda Jasht
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2018 is the 10th anniversary of Kosovo's independence. The theme Outside In/Inside Out or Nga Jasht Mbrenda / Nga Mbrenda Jasht in Albanian, was conceived with the idea that celebration offers pause to reflect on personal and collective pasts/presents/futures. In conjunction with looking at artists such as Philip Guston, Annette Messager, Barbara Kruger and Shimon Attie, the approach involved sharing a memory, a current event and envisioning a future. Students then interviewed community and family members about their memories from the past twenty years. These stories were documented with drawings, video, audio recordings and photography and became the content that informed our collaborative artwork, an interactive timeline.
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Using the timeline idea, the organizing of stories and creating symbols, experimenting with light sensitive paper, and creating a "Camera Obscura" in one of the center's classrooms made up the culminating exhibition which was curated by Adelphi and Kosovar students. This year we were joined by students from Adelphi University as part of a study abroad program led by Professors Cindy Maguire, Hannah Allen and Ann Holt. Using images, sound, and projections, Inside Out/Outside In: Kosovo was held on the Adelphi University campus. This exhibition was made possible with generous support from the Adelphi Women's Giving Circle and the Collaboration Project. You can view the catalogue here.
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*Thumbnails for slideshow won't always appear. Please click through to see images.
2017 Utopia/Dystopia: Interactive Art
We designed two arts experiences for the children and youth this year. For the primary age children, the central question was: "What's your secret superpower?" By focusing on imagination, we validate the needs of every child to dream big and feel important. By creating and sharing their art about superpowers/super hero dreams, we invite children to consider what they value and even, thinking into the future, how they might behave in a position of power (Jaqueline Jules, n.d.). The central questions for the youth were "Where do you see utopia?", "Where do you see dystopia?", and "What is the space in between the two?" By wrestling with these engaging yet difficult questions around the world they see and the one they want to envision, the youth produced art that essentially helps them map these futures.
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Video 1 by teaching artists Sasha Spare & Shannon Kopunek
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Children's work combining art, sound and technology.
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The work was expressed through a series of making activities including painting, drawing, and interactive media bringing together sound, sensors, circuit building, 3D printing and projection to share the work with the broader community.
2015 Drawing Connections: Art and Technology
Year Six was all about art, aesthetics and technology. Prior to our visit to Fellbach-Haus we shared a short video of drawing machines created by students from the Sydney University of Technology. Teaching artist Refki Gollopeni shared the video with his students who then began exploring how to create their own machines. We arrived a few months later and what you see is the outcome of our work working together.
Individual Drawing Machines
Sampling of the Drawings
2014 Outside My Window & Open Stories
This was our fifth year of co-creating another week of workshops that included large-scale body-map mixed media paintings and further exploration of stop-motion animation.
The Body Map project began in the USA with students from Adelphi University creating their life-size hybrid body map artworks using the content of individual "I Am Poems" or responding to the prompt "Outside my window I see..." as well as collective art/mark making. Each group of 3-4 students was charged with finding a way to work together and to co The Body Map project began in the USA with students from Adelphi University creating their life-size hybrid body map artworks using the content of individual "I Am Poems" or responding to the prompt "Outside my window I see..." as well as collective art/mark making. Each group of 3-4 students was charged with finding a way to work together and to come up with a hybrid person that represented, collectively, each member of the team. This project is loosely based on the body maps projects that come out of countries such as South Africa and Tanzania.
2014 Animation Short
2013 Theranda Animation Film Festival
ArtsAction Group collaborated with the Theranda Animation Arts Festival (Taff) initiated by Refki Gallopeni from Fellbach Haus. This work was an outgrowth of the excitement and interest generated from last year's animation workshops. We also welcomed the participation of Rebecca Davis, theatre artist and educator, into the workshops offered this year at Fellbach-Haus. The work of her students was performed during the final exhibition and screening of the international animation festival winners.
Singing performance on the final evening of the TAFF Animation Film Festival in Theranda.
2012 Animating Our Worlds
Editing in the studio.
ArtsAction Group members, Rob McCallum, Cindy Maguire, Dana Helwick, Emma Exley and Ana Fernandez in March 2012 introduced stop-motion and claymation animation to a group of elementary and secondary level students Fellbach-Haus. Discussions and explorations centered on the big ideas of story telling, identity and memory. Contemporary artists introduced into the lessons were Blu, for the collaborative, public space nature of his work and William Kentridge for his use of personal and socio-political narrative content. Other skills introduced included visual narrative story-telling as well as the youth curating the final exhibition.
We were privileged to have university students come from Pristina who had experience in animation to participate and make a valuable contribution in putting the project together.
We were privileged to have university students come from Pristina who had experience in animation to participate and make a valuable contribution in putting the project together.
Brief video documenting the student work.
2011 Mapping Suhareka!
Youth curating the final exhibition.
Cindy Maguire and Rob McCallum returned to Fellbach-Haus and worked with Refk Gallopeni for the second year of our collaboration, Mapping Suhareka! During the Balkan War and specifically within Kosovo, it is estimated that over 90% of the buildings across the country, were damaged and/or destroyed. In light of the rebuilding efforts going on across the region, ArtsAction Group and Fellbach-Haus chose architecture and community-design as a focus for the work.Discussions and explorations looked at mapping as metaphor and included the artwork of Mark Bradford and David Hockney. Bradford transforms materials gathered from the street onto wall sized collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks - underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space - that emerge within a city or community. We started with youth researching, visually mapping and interpreting the spaces and places in the community that hold meaning for them. After mapping, the youth were charged with conceptualizing public places and spaces for present and future community needs/desires.
2011 Mapping Suhareka!
This initial work was collaborative while the following project, designing a community space and/or building included options for solo or team work. The final exhibition, curated by the students, showcases the project for the community and invited guests.
2010 Building Bridges: LA, NYC, Suhareka
A week-long arts workshop with Terry Lenihan ( a Professor at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, CA.) and Cindy Maguire, with Refki Gollopeni, at Fellbach-Haus. They worked with elementary children and high school youth. The project involved self-portraits, mural painting and finally bridge building as a way for all the communities to introduce themselves and get to know one another. The final artwork was exhibited as an installation with all three murals exhibited in Los Angeles, New York City and Theranda. Our K-8 partners were the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City and a K-8 school in Venice, CA.
2010 Building Bridges
