At the beginning of February 2017, artists-teachers, art critics, animators, heads of art educational institutions gathered at the educational center of the Green Cross Belarus NGO to discuss current issues of art education. Representatives of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Armenia and Turkey participated in the conference.

As in previous years, the programme was rich for messages, presentations and discussions, and, like last year, it was divided into two parts - art education and children's animation.

The first day was dedicated to art education issues in different countries. After a short introductory speech by the Conference’s managers, the floor was turned over to one of the jury board’s members – Lidiya Ishkova who traditionally analyzed the works that had participated in the contest. The speech was mostly related to mistakes made by authors of the works and by their teachers. The speech turned out to be very lively and vivid as it was accompanied by displaying the works that, in the opinion of the jury board, could not have been eligible for getting awards.

After the speech, there was a short discussion: the teachers were interested in discussion of the comments made by the jury board’s members, and also in learning a little more about how the national features that were reflected in works of the contestants.

The topic of art contests was continued by Mizyal Karabiber Nadzhyaroglu, the director of the Children's Art Gallery, who presented the International Contest of Children’s Drawing in Gaziantep (Turkey) organized by her. Her speech was dedicated to the history and development of the contest and related projects. Moreover, the guest from Turkey told a little about her approach to working with children.

The richest for information was a part dedicated to the modern art education.

Anna Vygonnaya talked about the development of art schools in different countries. For several months in 2016, she managed to get acquainted with the experience of organizing art education in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine and Poland. In her speech, she attracted the participants’ attention to the arrangement of art schools (departments), their possibilities and activities, attention paid by local communities and their demand. Some words were added to the speech of Anna Albertovna by Ivan Gavrilyuk, the director of Lutsk Children’s Art School (Ukraine), Ilgnese Avotina, the deputy director on studies issues of Riga National Secondary Art School (Latvia),  and Aldona Kachmarchyk-Kolyutska, the manager of the Art Studio “Creatio” under the Youth Recreational Centre (Rybnik, Poland).

The art schools continued exchanging experiences by speeches of representative of Kaliningrad Children's Art School (Russia). Natalia Voronova, the director of the art school, told about pre-professional programmes and teaching materials developed at the school. Tatyana Kolodyazhnaya, a teacher, talked a little about the synthesis of artistic and ecological education and showed works of her students in the technique of “paper-plastic”.

A short break was also filled with creativity: an exhibition of etudes by Peter Shatilo, an artist-teacher from Belarus, was opened in the gallery of the centre. In his speech, he talked about when he started his career and how his passion subsequently affected the life of the whole family.

Olga Valyushkina, the deputy director of Vitebsk Children’s Art School (Belarus), continued the topic of educating young artists and the succession of generations. She talked about the history of the school and a modern system of organization of its work. The speech was accompanied by examples of works created by pupils of the school.

The history and modern work of the schools were presented by Pavel Khlebovskiy,  the director of Sevastopol Art School (Russia), and Aleksandr Sorokin, the head of the art department of Votkinsk School of Arts #2 (Russia).

More narrow topics for discussion were suggested by Marina Fazanova and Daria Rubtsova, teachers of Gatchina Children's Art School (Russia). The topic of their speeches concerned the composition: Marina Fazanova spoke about importance and results of involving parents at different stages of work on thematic compositions; Daria Rubtsova gradually described a training process of transferring emotions in formal and easel compositions.

The first day of the conference was finished by speeches on art projects. Tatyana Bureyko, the deputy director of Minsk Children’s School of Arts #3 (Belarus), talked about the experience of making puppets by pupils of the school for a play that they performed later. Aldona Kachmarchyk-Kolyutska, the manager of the Art Studio “Creatio” (Rybnik, Poland), talked about plein-airs she conducted for the children from her studio.   

The second day of the Conference was dedicated to animation, and, just like on the first day, it began with a review of results of the Contest of Animated Cartoons and Slidefilms.

Mikhail Tumelya, the Chairman of the jury board, talked about a system of evaluating works and made a short analyze of cartoons and slideflims that had been presented at the contest: originality of the plot, artistic qualities, understanding of the movement, etc. The speech was accompanied by a display of some of the best works. In particular, a cartoon entitled as “People-Islands” was shown, as an example of good teamwork, which was filmed in the genre of a documentary cartoon. Moreover, the jury highlighted works that were completely or partially created by children with disabilities who participated in the contest on equal terms with other cartoons. As for shortcomings, Mikhail Tumelya noted negligence when shooting which deteriorated impression of films, and uniformity of works. In his speech, he paid special attention to slidefilms that, in his opinion, represented a very promising direction, including as the first step towards animation.

Marina Volkova, a publisher, a teacher, a psychologist and a member of the jury board, gave the following speech. Like last year, she highly appreciated the value of children's work on a cartoon and gave her conclusions on the results of the contest. In particular, she talked about appearance of a tradition and a kind of orientation towards the jury, and generation of new genres. As a publisher, Marina Volkova most strictly assessed the textual basis, therefore, she commented in detail on the choice of a material, development of a script, an attitude to literary works and fairytales that formed a basis of the films.

When discussing, the main questions related to technical and creative recommendations on filming a cartoon. As a result, there was a proposal on to prepare a short instruction regarding the asked questions.

Olga Sukhonitskaya, a private teacher of fine arts from Mozyr, continued the discussion. She talked about an art studio where she worked with children including on filming cartoons.

Various approaches to working with children on filming cartoons were covered in speeches by representatives of Lithuania, Latvia and Russia. Neringa Shyupinskene (Kaunas, Lithuania) and Ilgnese Avotina (Riga, Latvia) spoke about that direction in art schools: technical possibilities and the history of the direction. Ilze Ruska (Riga, Latvia) talked about organizing work in her studio, the way she worked with children from the moment of generation of an idea to the film’s presentation. All presentations were accompanied by displaying works.

The brightest speech was delivered by Vladimir Ishchuk and Margarita Nagibina, managers of the Animated Creativity Centre “Perspektiva” (Yaroslavl, Russia). In their speech, they talked about the time when their centre was created, an educational system, why and how children came to the centre, how directions were chosen, how they worked on films. Moreover, they highlighted importance of a teacher’s role: his/her interest, approaches to the work, knowledge and wishes to develop independently and with children in the chosen direction.

Representatives of the centre “Perspektiva” attracted special attention to the topic of music in films and importance of the successful musical accompaniment. According to Vladimir Ishchuk, a musical issue was addressed quite easily in the centre thanks to one of their managers who was a musician and composer. Nevertheless, in most cases, a difficulty in working on musical accompaniment existed both for authors of cartoons and for musicians attracted to it, since authors often did not offer musicians a scenario that could serve a guide. Andrey Evdokimov, a musician from Minsk and one of the organizers of a public show of slidefilms.

In addition to presentations, the participants of the conference could also get acquainted with the work of pupils of Olga Sukhonitskaya, whose exhibition was presented in several halls of the centre, as well as results of the international plein-air “The Dnieper Ferry”, and visit the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus and a gallery in Minsk.

The conference’s materials will be posted on the web-site since the participants were quite interested in them. We hope that communication and information got during the conference will help artists-teachers in their work, to realize ideas and develop new directions.

See the photos