Overview of the project.

The group began meeting in the late winter of 2008. After we had shortlisted the young people that were going to come we sat and planned the budget and a strategy to get the most out of the trip as possible. We devised and scheduled a number of sessions to work with the young people to plan and organise the project with them, to get their input and for them to become more cohesive as a group.

With the young people we drew up a list of everything that we thought we would need to do and then slowly but surely we set about doing it.

The group had several preliminary sessions to introduce them to the Funarte Project, to Nicaragua and for them to become familiar with working with each other again. Dan and Janet came and spoke about the Project. They showed us a slide show all about the project. This is what we learnt about Funarte:

Funarte was founded in 1989 in Esteli.
Their mission is to engage children and encourage their development with an effective educational process. To get adults to appreciate children. To have children participate in society and socialise children. To get children to integrate creativity into society.

History. Before the revolution there was a dictatorship in Nicaragua. There were no art lessons in school. During the revolution there became a unique chance for art to play a role in social transformation. But the Nicaraguan artists were making money from their own work and were not interested in painting murals so the Funarte artists decided to work with children.
Dan described Funarte as a small (but growing) cog trying to turn bigger cogs in the Nicaraguan system. Bigger cogs like the primary school education system (Funarte now advise the government about educating children. The next cog is Mainstream education!

The group works on commissions or walls that are offered to them. The workshop run with lots of small children painting (at weekends?) From this a group of more dedicated children grow into the role of mural artists. In the weekend workshops they design murals around the themes like Equality, Ecology and the environment, Solidarity, Children’s rights, History, The Revolution and Society. Their murals are not very abstract. The murals tell stories and are quite symbolic.

Funarte work in Special Schools and in Prisons (prisons with young people)

From our meeting with Dan and Janet we also got lots of practical information about travelling. We compiled a list after talking to them.

Bullet Points/Info for the trip.

Watch out for the culture shock
Take around £60 spending money (convert into US dollars $)
Fly with American Airlines
Take a phrase book
Pack clothes to paint in and clothes for the evening activities
Fly to Miami and transfer to Managua
Bring gifts of high end art materials
Arrange for Funarte to collect/transport us to and from the airport (approx cost $200)
Use taxis to transport us around
Raise £1,000 for the project and employ someone to develop a website for the group
Pay Janet some money for the house to get furnishings/tables/chairs/stoves/gas canisters/mosquito nets/mattress/bedding
Create a power point presentation for them about SOL
Work on using a daily budget of around $150 for the group (transport/taxis and food)
There is a long distance phone in the Funarte office



Maria made contact with Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign. They provided us with information about the Country,useful books and videos, their experiences…
http://www.nicaraguasc.org.uk/

Maria also spoke to Helen (the Minister at The Bromley By Bow Centre) where she gained valuable insights into the educational visits that Helen has taken many young people on over the years. Helen was really helpful and gave us lots of great ideas.

Maria prepared some Spanish lessons for the group so that they could try and learn the basics. We played games in Spanish and whenever we met for a session we would try and learn new words.

We decided that we would create some t-shirts to raise money to help support the group and give something back to them for letting us visit them. We spent several sessions learning the technique, perfecting the designs and the process of printing. At one point we had a production line going and we managed to print and produce nearly 50 t-shirts in one night. We started to sell some of them and everbody seemed to like the designs.

A few weeks before the group went away we all met with the parents and careers of the young people. We spent an evening together talking about the project, giving them the crucial information they needed and discussing the risk assement that we had created. At this point the project felt very real and people had some very real information to enable them to prepare for the trip. The anticipation was clear! In the last few weeks before the group went they began to really pull together. They would work extra hard to make sure tasks were complete and that we remained on schedule.

A letter from Anabell and The Funarte Group

Hola Maria,

De nuestra parte tambien hay mucho entusiasmo para recibirles y compartir
con ustedes nuestro trabajo.

Cuanto tiempo se quedaran en FUNARTE? Saben las fechas esactas de su
llegada y salida?

En relacion a la pagina WEB, si algun miembro del grupo tiene la experiencia
en hacer este tipo de trabajo yo pienso que seria bueno que aportara sus
ideas, tambien estoy de acuerdo con la propuesta de contratar a una persona
en Nicaragua, quien se encargue de finalizar el diseño de la pagina y
ponerla a funcionar.

Un abrazo

Anabell


Translation

Hello,
We are very happy about your visit to Funarte and there is lots of enthusiasm to share our work with your project.For how long are you going to be in Funarte? Do you know the exact time of your arrival and departure?In relation to the web site, I think, if there is any members of your group that have the experience of doing this type of work, it will be good to share their ideas with us. I am also agree about the idea to contract someone in Nicaragua to finalise the design of the web and put it up on the net.
Anabell

Introduction to the group

This is what the group had to say before they went on the trip.

Hello my names Pretti . i am 14 years old . i have been a member of signs of life for quite a while now . i love drawing and think that going to another country with the group will be a great experience and cant wait !!! xoxox

Hello I’m Jenny I am 14 years old I go to signs of life and I like to make art and paintings. I am really excited about working with the funarte group in Esteli.I really like rock music and I love to hang out with my friends.My family are very important to me and I will miss them very much while we are on the trip.

Hello I am Chris. I manage Signs Of Life. I am really excited about the trip to Nicaragua even though I am not going. It’s my job to organise everything! It is going to be such an amazing experience for the young people and leaders of Signs Of Life.

Hello my name is Jessie. I like running and participating in sports. i am a member of sol (signs of life ) and have been for a long time . i enjoy looking in the mirror and chilling with my mates on street corners.

Hi my names Paul, I’m 17 years old. I’ve been a member of Signs of Life group for many years now. I enjoy drawing, listening to music, and playing football with my friends; when i’m not working. I’m very interested in street dancing.

Hi I’m Shakir, all my friends call me Shax. I’m one of the older members of the signs of life group. I’ve been involved in many of the earlier projects with Frank. Having grown up in Tower Hamlets, I found going to the art sessions, a way to de-stress, have fun, and meet friendly like minded people. It was through these projects that I learnt to broaden my horizons, meeting interesting people.
I’ve always been academic, my strongest subjects being the sciences, aspiring to study medicine. But, doing art with the signs of life group has been more entertaining, and something that I look forward to, after studying long hours in class.

My name is Maria Alvarez Echenique, I am one of the leaders of the trip.I have been working with Signs of Life as an artists and teacher for the past 5 years. I am native Spanish speaker so I will be the main translator of the group. If you would like to see some of my work and some of the projects I have done with the group visit http://www.mazchenik.co.uk/

My name is Frank Creber, I am one of the leaders on the trip, I helped to set up Signs of Life with Chris Warmington a few years back. I am an artist and you can see more of my work on http://www.artspacegallery.co.uk/

Signs Of Life get funding from Barclays Bank to visit The Funarte Project in Nicaragua

About a year ago Signs Of Life heard that they had recieved some funding to take some of the members of the group to Esteli in Nicaragua. Barclays Bank came to visit us at The Bromley By Bow Centre in the summer of 2007. They got really excited about our Centre and The Signs Of Life project and generously decided to fund this project. We also found some additional match funding from The Bank Of America. The funding was going to cover the costs for the group to visit and learn about the Funarte Project. Funarte is a project that was set up over 15 years ago by Janet PAvone, Anabell Garcia and Dan Hopewell (the Director of Services at The Bromley By Bow Centre). Funarte are a mural painting group with some similarities to Signs Of Life. 5 young people and two of the artists from Signs Of Life were choosen to go. Over the space of a year the group met and planned, organised, learnt and got excited about this wonderful opportunity.

We would like to sincerely thank Barclays Bank and Bank Of America for providing us with such an incredible opportunity. This project will be life changing for all the participants. Two of the young people in the group did not have passports prior to being invited to join the project.

"What - you mean we are going to fly somewhere on a plane?!" was the response I got from the two of them when we first told them about their participation on the trip.