OrnaMental City Map
Length:
1 week (1blended part +1 workshop)
- 1introduction (1 hour)
- 1external activity : walk in the city (1 hour)
- 1 co-creative workshop (2 hours)
Skills to learn and objectives
- improving kills in visual content making
- soft skills (team and community building)
- discovery of local visual environment a
- improving skills in story telling, sharing experience
- creating bridge between local culture, culture of origin and each other.
The discovery part of this exercise can be also done in groups or pairs. Throughout the walk, we search for ornaments but also sounds, smells and things to touch.
We learn to document our research through images and videos.
We learn how to present visual stories in alternative ways (non linearly but circularly) and how to structure ideas into a system with the help of images.
1. Mental map drawing :
First, we drew our mental maps about our neighborhood on which we marked all the places where we like seeing, touching, hearing or smelling things.
2. Then we went out for a walk to visit all these places and we created small stories through pictures and short videos about them. We also discover details that we didn't thing of previously:
In this exercise you'll make appeal to your faculty of abstraction. You can transform places and buildings too into ornaments.
This is how you can procede:
3. In the creative phase of this version of OrnaMental maps, to create your map,you can find inspiration in the city map itself: your OrnaMental map can be designed as a labyrinth pattern inspired by streets and buildings into which you can integrate the patterns and even places that you found.
1. You create together and imaginary map with aleatory roads. Draw first simple geometric forms such as triangles, half circles and rectangles.
2. Transform these shapes into a network of paths or roads by adding lines and erasing others as if you were creating a labyrinth game.
3. Now each of you can add a place, a building or anything else where you find nice smell, nice view or nice sounds in your own neighborhood.
Draw them into the empty spaces left between the roads.
4. If you work in more than one group, one person can participate to more than one plan. The result will be a plan of an idealistic town where all of your important places will be represented and linked to each other wherever they are.
You may also work individually on a map putting on it all the places you like.
After coloring your drawing, the result may look like something like this:
Wall with Arabic tag
in Marseilles
A calm street by night
in Szentendre
North African kelim carpet patterns from Tunis
My house's entry in old Damascus
Norias (water wheels)
in Hama
Palm trees in the oasis of Tozeur
The Marne river near Paris embracing a small island and wooden bridges
Graffiti on the walls in Berlin
Colorful pavement in the Capella Palatina in Palermo
Checkers game played on a cafe terrace in Fez
Riverside in early autumn near Paris
Small lake next to our home in Maisons-Alfort
Nice drain cover patterns in Budapest
Stairs leading up to Montmartres through the park in springtime
You can also transform your maps into :
