New Architects At Olives!!

So I have entered my sixth week at Olives teaching Standard 2 and every day the kids always seem to amaze me. Teaching English and Science here has been a real challenge because we have limited resources in which to reach out to these children and teach them as much as possible in a short period of time, in hopes they will graduate to Standard 3 (and at best out of the slum). But the real challenge has been Creative Arts. One would think Creative Art would be a pleasure to teach, however I and most of the volunteers here struggle at finding something to demonstrate or teach the children, all we have is our open minds and our own experiences and ideas of why/how we are all here.

Some quality time before we get down to the dirty work.....

After some brainstorming, I decided to incorporate my own profession as a designer/architect in hopes to pass the interest onto a child or find an unknown talent in a young mind. So we began by drawing a bird’s eye view of Olives School. The children copied my free hand sketch on the board of each classroom full of doors, windows, chalkboards and even desks. Some of the passionate artists in the class even included themselves and where they sit. This exercise worked out quite well and just as I thought the students were finished they asked if they were going to draw the school the next Creative Art class.

Building in scale and in process......impressive stuff!

If I thought at all I was going to loose the children on the next task of drawing Olives School, I thought the explanation of drawing the front view would be it. For us future designers/architects, using our visual senses are the most useful skill we own. So I and the children headed out with paper and pencils to the mango tree and began drawing the front view of the school. I must admit that I was quite impressed with the amount of detail an excitement they had towards this difficult concept. And as you can see these are our future Kenyan architects.

Cant forget the infamous Mango Tree

With such excitement about Standard 2’s drawings and showing them off to the other volunteers, I thought it would be appropriate to extend this exercise to measuring the school and making a cardboard model. Collaboratively, the students and I measured and cut the model to scale, coloured the exterior walls, doors, and windows. The roof was framed by twigs and covered by coloured cardboard. Even the mango trees were pasted into place. Proudly, after two weeks The Olives School model had been completed.

Completed and Proud!

This was an amazing experience that I will remember forever. And the images of these children working in that dark, hot classroom as a team as well as individually to complete Standard 2’s model will be close to my heart. I just hope that future volunteers share their talents and open minds with these children because this is all these children have to being creative.

Lisa Tomasi 2010

New Architects At Olives!!