Arts Lab 6.0: Salma ElGendy - Month 5

We’ve made it to Month 5 already, how crazy is that! Emotional rollercoaster doesn’t even begin to describe this month.

The month began with the Rroma Residency at Ion Creangă School. Kristers and I collaborated for this one. We decided to do various activities that include painting, drawing and crafts. Our two main activities were working with the students to design their own notebook covers and drawing on textiles to create a quilt, and the theme was “A Better Life”.

This residency was 6 days but they were divided to 3 and 3 since we had the mid-term training in Bucharest in the middle. The first 3 days were a bit challenging as we could see visible tension between the Rroma and non-Rroma students, however, as the days went by, we tried our best to have more games and group activities to make sure everyone was participating and that the atmosphere was peaceful.

We asked the students for feedback and were really relieved to hear that they enjoyed the activities and had fun creating different types of art and crafts.

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Before leaving for the mid-term, we received the sad news that Katrina and Kristers had to leave for Latvia due to personal reasons :(.

The Latvian Night was the last event we had before leaving for Bucharest and it was a mix of laughter and tears, but we did get to spend a couple of days with Katrina and Kristers in Bucharest before they left and it was a really precious time. I cannot wait for us to meet again one day, hopefully sooner than we expect.

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The mid-term in Bucharest. Where to begin? Oh I know, THE WATER, BRUHH 😂

Let’s briefly talk about the actual training first tho :’D Honestly, it was pretty great! We had really nice facilitators and even though they were full days from morning to evening, they were actually fun and the group had amazing volunteers from other projects. We connected pretty fast and the activities we had in the sessions really brought us together.

Back to the water now. The hotel had this water machine that had all those different types of water: cold, sparkling, hot and even ambient, whatever that even is 😂 I swear that water just tasted different, it was SO good that other water just tasted awful afterwards, it literally said “purifying water” like, on the spot when we pressed the button. I mean, even the machine had “Not all water is the same” on the screen, and as slightly racist as that sounds, man, it was true. I will not give up on the idea of actually getting that machine for the Act House. The water you guys. THE water.

Honestly, the entire hotel was amazing, and having a room to myself for those 5 days was such a blissful -and much needed- experience. The food was so delicious and not having to wash dishes afterwards was kinda refreshing ngl. I think everybody just wanted to stay there forever.

My birthday was also on the 2nd day of the mid-term and everyone sang me Happy Birthday and I got some awesome little gifts from my Arts Lab people, it was really heartwarming :’)

On the last day before we left we went to this Modern Art Immersive Museum and it was STUNNINGGG. I absolutely loved it and was so glad we got to visit it together before we left. I’d always wanted to go to this type of museum at least once.

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After returning from the mid-term, I had to continue the residency on my own. I was a bit worried about being alone on the first day, but thankfully it went well. And for the last 2 days, I moved to a different classroom with younger students who also had their teacher present, and Cosmina joined me too, so that was really helpful and made me more relaxed. The students were so cute and we created many beautiful things together, including new pieces for the quilt. It was a nice ending for the residency and I really enjoyed working with this age group more than I thought I would!

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Naturally, exhibition prep started after the residency was done, and everybody was busy finishing up personal artworks as well. I was excited to see my brochures finally printed, it was really satisfying to hold the physical result in my hand. 

During the actual exhibition I had a mix of emotions. While I was definitely glad to see the visitors using the map brochure and going from one artwork/artist to the other, collecting each country’s “Rroma Craft/Figure” sticker and actually enjoying it, I was hoping they would also be interested more in the information brochure and learning more about the culture. I also felt a bit empty not having a space in the heart of the exhibition itself and another, more personal, artwork. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the exhibition and I was really proud of everyone’s work, including my own. I also had the chance to experience being an event coordinator of a sort and arranging where each artwork goes and coordinating them with the map in the brochure and planning the direction in which the guests would go and everything. It was nice getting positive feedback afterwards, one more skill upgraded!

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After the exhibition, we had off days, but I spent them working on the quilt as there was still a lot of work to be done. I had the textiles that the students drew on but I still needed to sew them together, while also being careful with my arm since it hasn’t completely healed yet.

We also started preparing for the next residency, Cucuteni, right away.

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For the Cucuteni Residency, there was a different suggestion: to recruit volunteers and create an artwork with them. However, I wasn’t a huge fan of this plan as it didn’t feel organized and there wasn’t much to go on, so I decided to do a regular residency at a new school, Trinitas—and it was honestly the best decision ever!

The challenge was that this school had students with diverse needs, an area I haven’t experienced before, but the teachers were incredibly supportive, and some students had their mothers accompany them, which helped them feel more comfortable and, in turn, provided great support for us as facilitators.

This experience was deeply valuable for me; working with such a wide range of students and observing the teachers’ interactions was truly priceless; I saw in the teachers the type of educator I aspire to be. I really loved this new dynamic of students, teachers, and parents all working together and creating art! The results turned out amazing, and I feel like my heart is so full after this residency. I can only hope I managed to leave as much of a beautiful memory to them as they did for me. I’m deeply grateful that this was the final stop in the residencies chapter, there really couldn’t have been a better ending.♥️

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I’m really enjoying working on the quilt these days and cannot wait to see it after it’s finished. I’m trying to work faster because I want it to be exhibited in the French Institute exhibition we will have at the end of February, but also need to start juggling between it and my personal artwork for Cucuteni, especially since the idea I have needs like 3 months or something, but I have to figure out how to do it in a couple of weeks at most 😅 I’m really excited about it tho and the fact that I’m slowly getting back to ceramics. Hopefully I manage to finish it on time, preferably without ruining my arm, we’ll see how it goes :’)

Time feels like it’s going faster now indeed. I cannot believe we’re so close to the end already.

Five months down. Two more to go.

Report written by Salma ElGendy, she's from Egypt and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.