This year we had the fantastic opportunity to work with Interfaith Childhoods for our first two creative workshops. We had such an amazing time talking about our different cultures and expressing our beliefs and describing what is involved with our community. We were able to work together to portray our communities in the form of a large scale acrylic painting, working in groups with our mentors.
Read more about Interfaith Childhoods below, and visit their website!
“We are currently undertaking a study titled Interfaith Arts, Community and Belonging. This study is funded by a 4 year Australian government grant. This is the first major trans-national, arts-based childhood interfaith research program in Australia and the UK. A key aim of the project is to explore how art workshops can help increase cross cultural understanding between young people of different faiths from an early age.
The project works with children and their parents/guardians. The children are asked to join in a series of arts workshops to explore their understandings of culture and belonging though activities including finger painting, making papier-mâché, dancing and making films. The children are provided with snacks/lunch and all arts material. These workshops will be led by me (Professor Anna Hickey-Moody) and Dr Lutfiye Ali. They will be filmed and photographed to document the knowledge generated by the children. The art works created by children will be used to create a public art campaign. The public art campaign will be disseminated via project website, social media sites and on billboards and buses.
The workshops will be followed with a group discussion (focus group) and follow up interviews with the children’s parents/guardians in which we discuss questions about faith, belonging and their children’s experiences of the workshops.”