ARTWORK – WORDS – POETRY CREATION – NEW ARTWORK

This exercise was done with all four participating classes in the Global roots project in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. With the forest as a theme, we want to arouse creativity and the desire to create new art. The well-known Swedish artist John Bauer has illustrated many fairy tales with his painting, and during his short life he largely managed to shape Swedes’ views on what a magic forest looks like and how different Nordic beings take shape. Some of these images were thus used as a basis for the students’ own poetry creation and painting. By writing down together in small groups what you see in a picture, with only individual words, much of the performance anxiety disappears. All students then had exactly the same base to create from, each had to choose about ten words from the common paper. Despite this, none of the forthcoming works of art became the same. The same words appeared in the poems: the moose in the forest, the trolls by the big mountains and the princess by the water – but each student’s poem was unique. The same artistic material was then offered to all students, as well as the call for the same technology to be used. Inspiration can give rise to new, own creation. It’s not plagiarism or calcification – take part in other people’s art, let yourself be touched and create based on it.

The purpose of the exercise was precisely to let the students create their own multimodal works of art. The poems were later read by some theater students, and these recordings were also part of the large exhibition at the museum in Örnsköldsvik where the students’ individual works of art were hung together, and where visitors could also enjoy the poems by listening to them.