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.