100 DREAMS COMIC WORKSHOP IN RANTAKYLÄ SCHOOL

100 Dreams is a charity based project started by Esko-Pekka Tiitinen, in cooperation with Joensuu district multicultural association, for the benefit of children from North-Karelia, Finland. The 100 Dreams project consists of two parts: A book written by Esko-Pekka Tiitinen, and different cultural activities for children.
100 Dreams book, is based on interviews of 100 children with a foreign background living in North-Karelia. In the book, the children tells about their future dreams: about their hobbies, dream jobs, everyday life. The Income from the book is then used for organizing workshops and cultural activities for children

Last week I had an opportunity to take part in organizing and teaching in a comic workshop for children from Rantakylä school, Joensuu. There 9 participants aged from 10-13 years, Darja, Daniil, Seva, Helmi, Lubna, Sara, Aida and Nailja from Russia, Syria, Kosovo and Italia . 
We started by a morning warm up in the classroom, all participants had a chance to present warm up steps in their own language. Then after that it followed by a presentation from organizers and participant. I was working together with Teemu Laasonen and Sanna Kaari. Sanna is a teacher at Rantakylä school, and Teemu is a representative from 100 project, also has been living in Tanzania for couple of years with his family. 
We started by introduction of comics in general. We showed few samples from different workshops taken places around the world. Then we introduced steps of how to make comics.  Since my finnish language is not that good, Teemu was there to help me translating the whole thing, I must admit that he was very good at this. 
We had a lunch break, and after that we continued, by choosing the theme, making the story and visual script, also the final work. Finding an idea for the story is usual the hardest part with young children, especial when the them is presented to them. Some children where very fast in adopting to the concept, and some of them were slow and doubted if they could make a comic. This is perhaps, they haven't made comics before. Participants finished their comics in time, and in the end everyone was satisfied with their works.

 Participants preparing their visual scripts

 Pencil sketching begins

 A story from Daniil, which tells about leaving from current school to another. This was the theme which the students chose to work on. The original story of Daniil was in Russian, but then he changed the language into finnish language.


 Inking the comic


 Here is me guiding  Aida to clean the pencil from her work


 With the Valo-B class teacher Sanna Kaari, who was also there to help with the comic workshop



The final result: After each of the comic was ready, we displayed them in front of the class, so that everyone could see, what other student has done. There was nice feedbacks and applauds.


All photo credits to Teemu Laasonen

Ready more about 100 Unelmia here

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