Monthly Archives for July 2012

¡¡¡ CuArTo OsCuRo !!!

Rachel and Nicole

Since February, CMAP & JUCONI Ecuador have together been running a separate project ‘The Professional Photographers Group’ alongside the weekly art clubs. When I arrived in Guayaquil, I was keen to get stuck into anything photographic I could, and especially work with young people as well as the art club kids, so lucky for me there was already a group of JUCONI Graduates who wanted more help and access to photography, developing interests they have been introduced to as children thanks to CMAP and Art Club. Thanks to the enthusiasm, support and organisation of JUCONI, the group and I have been meeting weekly for workshops and seminars, and have become the official JUCONI events photographers.

(L-R Rachel, Michele & Nicole) The fantastic girls in the 'Professional Photography Group' and the CMAP girls in Guayaquil, Ecuador had a day of fun making a 'pop-up darkroom' in the JUCONI offices a couple of weeks ago.

Blanca, Nicole, Michele, Katie and I ran our one-day-only-darkroom 2 weeks ago, it was a bit of a farewell from me and thank you to everyone supporting our photography, but also, for Nicole and Michele, their first ever dark room experience. It’s so wonderful being with people their first time in the dark room – it is nothing if not magic!

In the morning Katie and I taught the girls to use the pinhole-cameras (aka – drinks cans) and come afternoon we opened the door to the hoards of JUCONI staff who were eager to see the darkroom and develope their own photographs. The students became the teachers in the afternoon, guiding everyone through their first pin-hole experience, explaining how it works (to everyones disbelief!) and introducing them to the darkroom. The experience of becoming the ‘tutor’, for the young photographers, was worthwhile and they did an excellent job – I hope that in future they will be able to share their skills with more and more JUCONI kids by themselves facilitating photography groups.

The fact that we were able to turn the Operational Directors office into a dark room for a day, and were over-run by eager staff wanting to learn, is testament to the support and enthusiasm we recieve from JUCONI Ecuador.

Here’s a selection of the photos…..





If you want to know more about the magic of pinhole photography and using drinks cans as cameras (amongst many other inane objects) read here … http://www.pinholephotography.org/

Rachel x

Posted in Volunteer Blog by Helen on July 31, 2012 at 4:32 pm

cmap’s first art auction success

We would like to send a massive thank you to everyone who attended our first annual art auction in late June. There was a great atmosphere and large funds being raised for cmap‘s UK work.

Thank you to everyone who donated artwork, volunteered their time to support and came along to bid.

If you couldn’t make it we hope to see you next time.

We’ll be confirming details of our auction for 2013 within the next few months. Watch this space.

Posted in News by Lone & Andrew on July 29, 2012 at 10:37 am

Brazil: Linha de partida

The sun is back!!! There it shines, giving us no reason to doubt that we are in Brazil and making us quite disbelieve that this is mid winter!!
I was very excited to receive my first piece of mail here at ACER Brasil and even more excited to find that the letter consisted of certificates and Paralympic badges to congratulate the young people for their contribution to the ‘Driving Inspiration Paralympic Animation’ project. It was a great surprise.

The animation group’s work was whisked away to Chalfonts School in England, last month and provided the inspiration for their 30 second animation. We had a live link up with the Animator, Gary Schwartz and some of the young people from Chalfonts School who were involved in creating the storyboard for the Brazil animation. The young people from Brazil and England were able to discuss the ideas they had, where the inspiration had come from and what they wanted to see in particular in the animation, as well as exchange weather reports! The final piece will be ready very soon and we look forward to the premiere.

Rachel and I have since been working on another Paralympic project called ‘Starting Line’ which is a grand and ambitious international project that aims to connect disabled and non-disabled young people from around the world, promoting awareness and understanding of the Paralympics in the process. By collecting work of all mediums from the groups involved, the artists; Visual Artist Rachel Gadsden, Artistic Director/Designer Ryan Laight, Filmmaker Abigail Norris and Candoco young dancers will create a piece of visual art, dance & film, titled ‘The Starting Line’ which will be performed outdoors at the opening of the 2012 Paralympics in Stoke Mandeville.

Our bustling sessions began with drama games and movement; to get us focused and thinking about physicality. Miming, mirroring and movement!
SLdrama – Mobile
Here is a short snippet of our warm up games.

Taking inspiration from Rachel Gadsden we created movement pictures which with a splash of colour really took form and worked beautifully.

In response to the challenge of recreating the atmosphere of ‘The Starting Line’, the young people were filmed as if about to commence a race…’um, dois, três…VAI!’StartingLine

Next we went big and bold, to capture the movement of a Paralympic sport in silhouette form. In small groups the young people chose a sport and then three positions to convey the movement of this sport. They drew around each other in these positions, each outline over-lapping the other.

Our next few sessions became a riot of colour! Paints, pastels, paper and glue were all harnessed to create wonderful, dynamic pictures.


Final pictures to follow!
Yoga classes are going well here at ACER, with regular attendees coming from Eldorado’s community and constant new comers. Last week a group of six young people came to try out some yoga which was wonderful. We were soon adding sound effects to the positions like Posição Cobra, Cobra Position and experimenting with aided head stands!

Posted in Volunteer Blog by Rhea on July 26, 2012 at 7:42 pm
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