This week I finally got to get more directly invovled in some good old fashioned art! Earlier I got to take pictures of art and talk to people about art, but this week was so much better. Someone put me in contact with a program called Arte Pintura, which takes art classes and music classes out to several rural communities. I went with the founder of the program(who is also the main teacher) out to several different communities so that the kids could do art for a contest, which was environmentally themed. It was wonderful!
The only downside was that to get to one of the communities I had to take a harrowing bikeride that was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. First of all, the brakes of this bike did not really work; they would slightly slow the bike down but they didnt really stop it. Then the roads were up and down some hills, and at some points were literally more pothole than road. ( we were going across little streches of road about as wide as I can stretch my hands) There were several instances where there were vehicles on the road and I was really questioning the decision of taking a bike with bad brakes. But in the end we got to the community safely and at the end of the pothole filled road these kids started showing up with their papers ready to paint on. They were so excited to see the teacher come.
The volunteers for Arte Pintura dont recieve a salary for what they do, so I was really interested in asking them what keeps them motivated. Jairo and his brother as well as several young people from the communities keep the program going from a few donations and selling postcards, they work really hard to see music and art integrated into the lives of some kids who don’t really have much else to look forward to during the week. Jairo says that its becuase the kids don’t just need to learn information, like they do at school( although sometimes they don’t even learn that much), they also need to learn to think, and to be able to express themselves. That process, he believes, will help them to be able to improve their lives and be adults capable of ingenuity and awareness of their world in the future.