On February 3-4, 2016, the 7th International Conference of Artists-Teachers “Modern Art Education of Children and the Young” was held at the Republican Centre of Ecology and Local History. Almost 100 teachers of arts schools of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Armenia became participants of the conference.

As usual, the programme included reports on the modern artistic education, presentations of arts educational institutions of various countries and some international contests and projects. Animation as a means of artistic education was a new topic to discuss within the framework of the conference.

On listening to brief welcoming speeches by the conference’s managers, Natalya Svyatkina, a representative of the Green Cross Belarus, the chief manager of the conference, proposed to remember the wonderful teachers, inspirational figures of art studios and teachers of several generations of creative children: Elena Mikhaylovna Sidorenko, the head of Brest studio “Akvarelka”, and Sergey Mikhaylovich Khryapin, the ounder and director of the studio “Zavyaz”. They passed away last year.

The first speeches covered the contests’ results. Lidiya Ishkova briefly talked about the work of the jury board of the Art and Graphics Contest, topics dominated in the works of particular countries, drew attention to Iran’s works, and finished her speech by talking about typical mistakes the young artists had done in their works. She accompanied her presentation by showing works submitted for the contest.

Showing some winning cartoons was a prologue to speeches by Galina Tupikova and Marina Volkova who summed up the contest of animated cartoons. Marina Volkova told about the importance of a literary component in cartoons, and Galina Tupikova drew attention to teacher's tasks when working on a cartoon, his/her role as a manager of the process and a mentor. The speech was finished by a small discussion about possibilities and options for the development of family animation studios.

The conference was continued by presentation of several international arts projects: Irina Vasilyeva from Donetsk presented the International Arts Project for Children “Peace to the World!”; representative of the children’s arts school of Kaliningrad talked about thematic international plein-airs held in Kaliningrad oblast.

Andrey Adamchik, the headmaster and teacher of the Children’s Arts School #1 n.a. V.K.Tsvirko (Minsk, Belarus), Sergey Gritsyn, a teacher of the Children’s School of Fine Arts (Mogilev, Belarus), and Lidiya Ishkova, the headmistress and teacher of the Children’s Arts School #1 n.a. V.V.Fedorov, talked about their author’s approaches within the framework of a workshop “Teaching Academic Drawing in Arts Schools”.  Their speeches were accompanied by real examples. Each of the speakers took his/her pupils’ works on that topic.

Elena Dichenskaya, an associate professor of the Department of Theory and Methods of Aesthetic Education of Brest State University n.a. A.S. Pushkin (Belarus), presented her author’s teaching technique on an example of a still life.

Armen Vantsyan, a teacher of the Department of Fine Arts of the Arts School n.a. L. Saryan, (Yereva, Armenia), talked about issues teachers faced with in artistic education. In particular, he noted that it was very important to learn from examples of classic art and to keep in mind meaningfulness of a work.

At the end of the first day of the Conference, two schools that celebrated jubilee last year, the Children's School of Art №1 n.a. K.K.Kostandi (Odessa, Ukraine) and the Children’s School of Art #2 (Saint-Petersburg), presented their activities and showed short presentations. Olga Gracheva, an associate professor of the Department of Psychology and Pedagogics of BSUCA (Minsk, Belarus) told that a subject “World’s Artistic Culture” had been included into school programme again.

Video presentation of the Children’s School of Art #1 n.a. K.K.Kostandi

Video presentation of the Children’s School of Art #2 of St. Petersburg

The second day of the conference began with an interesting speech about the inclusion of pupils of the Children’s School of Art of Komsomolsk-on-Amur to cultural traditions of indigenous peoples of the Amur basin within the process of artistic education. Tatyana Makarova, a teacher of the school, showed works of the children of indigenous peoples’ representatives, told about some traditions, showed a video of dances inspired by traditions of indigenous peoples.

A kind of preamble to the topic of cartoons was the speech delivered by Galina Yakovtsova. She talked about the theater at the Children's School of Art №2 of St. Petersburg. Galina Yakovtsova covered the topic on how to create dolls, how the idea to create a shadow performance appeared, how participants were preparing for the performance. At the end of the speech, Galina Yakovtsova invited everyone to visit the exhibition of the shadow play “Neva Stories”, which was held at the same time at the gallery “Nature and Art” of the Republican Centreof Ecology and Local History.

The main part of the programme included a master class on making cartoons held by GalinaTupikova. For two hours, she was showing various examples of cartoons made by children and teachers of arts schools, talking about peculiarities of such work, necessary technical and artistic instruments for making cartoons. The basic example was a cartoon made during a master class by two conference’s participants, SergeyGalushkin (Gomel, Belarus) and ViktorYashchenya (Russia). To work, they needed a sheet of paper, a brush, paints, a small tripod and a camera.

The conference was finished by the speech of Galina Romanova and Igor Volchek. They talked about the work of professional animated cartoon artists of the National Film Studio “BelarusFilm” and making cartoons “Rondo Capriccioso” and “Silly Pani and “Reasonable” Pan”.

The participants of the conference enthusiastically welcomed the topic of cartoons and expressed a great desire to try to develop this direction in their schools. In general, the conference, as usual, was received with great enthusiasm, the participants noted that for two days of active work they got a lot of creative ideas that they would like to bring to their work.

Materials on results of the conference will be on our web site soon.

See photos