The Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM) hosted a series of educational camp during the Christmas holidays that teach young children about the history of art.
Alison Jursa, who is the education and outreach programing coordinator for EAGM, taught the art camps, which ran from Jan. 3 to 5.
“It has been going very well so far and each day of the camp we host will teach the students about a different time period of art. So far we have taken a look at early art in ancient times and as the program concludes we will finish with cartoon animation,” said Jursa.
There was also a class on art in pop culture, featuring the works of such artists as Andy Warhol.
“The theme of the camp is art throughout the ages. I want to teach the kids how art has transformed throughout the ages and how art itself has shaped civilizations,” said Jursa.
“All of our camps and educational programing that we do is geared towards teaching kids about art while keeping them entertained and engaged,” she added.
Jursa said that she saw relatively good turnouts for the camp, with each day bringing between four to six kids. She wasn’t sure how popular the art history camp idea was going to be but it went very well.
“I wanted to select something that was easy so the kids would be able to get the concept behind the art I teaching them about,” said Jursa. “With young children it is always hard to teach them something while also avoiding not boring them.”
The animation class was going to be two-fold, in that the children tackled drawing and also animation. Jursa didn’t teach the kids how to animate with high tech programs but more with pencil and paper. Jursa said she noticed that the kids love to draw and paint and they seem very creative.
“They are going to learn how to create their own cartoons characters and I will be giving them a step by step guide on how to recreate some popular characters like Pikachu that the children can relate to,” said Jursa.
“After they create their characters they will build them into a story board. For the animation part we will be going with a Jeopardy game where the kids will learn about animation has changed over the years,” she added.
Moving forward EAGM will have a T-shirt making night with the Power Dodge Estevan Bruins on Jan. 12. A few players from the team are going to come in and create t-shirts, banners and posters with the kids that they can bring to future hockey games.
