Term 3 - 2011/2012

Myanmar (Justin) Refugees
Ms. Tung Yu Peng, a mother of one of the students in our group, visited our class to talk about her work as a volunteer at a Burmese refugee school for children. She has opened an art department there and donated essential items, and her moving words touched us all and definitely encouraged us to help out.- Fiona

The Barrel Project
The Community Arts group were given a total of 5 recycled oil drums, kindly donated by Mr. Raja Izal Shah. Inspired by the work he has done, it was decided that we were to paint the barrels to be put around the school as recycle bins.

Environment Day

Environmentalist Mr. Matthias Gelber, known as "The Greenest Man on Earth".

Talent Night

The Community Arts group organised and took complete control over the whole event. Everything you could possibly imagine was handled by the Community Arts group!

— AISHWARYA

Term 2 - 2011/2012

Project One: Working within our year group

Project Two: Working within our school community

Project Three: Visit to the Orphanage and Old Folk's Home

The term had just started and we found out that this CA was still going to be one of our subjects. We were really looking forward to see what we were going to do this term.

Project One: Working within our year group

'Project 1' started off with careful brainstorming and probing about the possibilities of artwork we could create. We saw a lot of different types of art, mainly site specific art and performance arts. When we had done all our research we were divided into two groups. The two groups were led by Bilal and Sarah.

Group 1: Bilal, Chelsea, Justin, Razif, Darren, Kamil, Tiffany and Tanisha

After carefully assessing all the options, we decided to make a sculpture, purely from recycled cans and bottles. We had placed green cardboard boxes all over the school to collect as many recyclable bottles and cans as we could. After only a week we saw that the boxes were completely filled. It was really fascinating to see how the community had actually participated and gave us the bottles. The making of the sculpture was difficult, as much glue and tape was needed to hold everything together. Everyone pitched in and with hard work; we managed to complete the sculpture. In the end it was painted and looked marvelous.-Tiffany and Tanisha

Group 2: Sarah, Katrina, Armani, Max, Sofea, Hatim, Aishwarya and Keen

We decided to paint a mural on the walls near the basketball court. We were really determined to do it, however, did not get the approval from the approval board and unfortunately had to find another option. In the end, we ended up painting on scrolls which thankfully went smoothly. We aimed to convey the message of preserving the environment and saving the wildlife through beautiful paintings of animals and scenery. The end results were astonishing.-Aishwarya and Keen

Project Two: Working within our school community

This was to work with the younger students of our school. Year 4 and Year 6 students were ours to work with this time around. We conducted an art workshop in which these students would make greeting cards for people at the orphanage and the old folk’s home, and vice versa.

Working with younger students isn’t that easy. Plenty of preparation had to be done and disciplining them was tough as they decided before-hand that they knew way better than us:)

Our sessions began with an introduction and a few short stories about some under privileged children and old people who have been neglected by their loved ones, just so they could understand what it was like living in those conditions. Right after that we did a short interactive presentation in which we showed them slides of what is an old folk’s home, why the elderly people go there and introduced what we were going to do for them. After that they started making the cards, with our help and motivation of course! We sat beside the kids and encouraged and helped them finish up their cards. Finally after all that fun, we managed to get them to sit down together in a group and we joined in for a group photo.- Kamil

Project Three: Visit to the Orphanage and Old Folk's Home

Visit to Agathians Shelter

Art Group: Sarah, Aishwarya, Hatim, Razif, Max, Armani, Darren

On the 1^st of March, we buckled up and got ready for the trip to the Agathians Shelter. The news of the unexpected number of children present pretty much ruined our mood, but we still stuck to our plan. We provided a few boxes of art materials such as colour pencils, crayons and paper and told the children to make drawings for Year 4 and Year 6 students of MIGS. They started to become slightly hyper seeing all the colorful art materials and they started off with their drawing. Some of them drew flowers, fishes or even just scribbles, which was their own perspective of art. In the end, we gave them greeting cards prepared by the students of MIGS for the children to keep. Although the children at the orphanage may not have understood the cards, they still greatly appreciated it and likewise the Year 4 and 6 classes felt as though they had communicated with them.- Hatim, Razif

Music Group: Daniel, Ian, Emyl

The visit to the orphanage was very educational. After a lengthened bus ride of about 30 minutes, we arrived at the orphanage, with several children running up to meet us, or at least to see what we had brought. Since their school was yet to be over, there were only a few children, so it was easy to organize and control them. First, we had a tour of the orphanage, and it was sad to see their poor living conditions. We began to prepare when we realized that the CDs we brought did not work, and we had a difficult time playing the music, but eventually we got one of the CDs to work for a short time.

When we were teaching, it was a struggle at first, but soon they picked up the moves quite fast. Some of them were quite skilled at performing their moves, and did all sorts of backflips, front flips & cartwheels. Most of the kids were very interested, and had fun practicing on their friends. Finally we played a short game with them called “Hot Potato”. We also donated money from a fundraiser in school, which was made by selling pizza. Overall, the kids had fun, and we left them smiling. Some kids were so sad to see us leave; they tugged on our shirts, wanting us to stay longer.- Ian

Visit to Poh Link Nursing Centre

Art Group: Katrina, Tanisha, Keen, Sofea, Chelsea, Kamil, Justin, Bilal, Tiffany

A week later, the second art group went to the Poh Link Nursing Centre. We exchanged greetings with all of the senior citizens there and talked to most of them as well. The senior citizens asked us questions like what school we were from, what were our names, how old we were and even complimented us. Keen played soothing songs with the Erhu which caught the attention of every single person there, not just because of his wonderful talent, but because of the music they heard coming from it. The manager of Poh Link Nursing Centre was so enthusiastic about it that he also started to sing along with the music- opera-style! Our group continued with the entertainment by singing Tong Hua while Sofea played the guitar, since the old folks themselves were Chinese. -Chelsea

Some of them were genuinely impressed with what they presented to the senior citizens, and we finished off the entertainment by singing Baby. The senior citizens found it quite hilarious, especially when the manager interrupted halfway and started singing his own version of ‘Baby’ in a deep voice. Before leaving, we designed quite a number of colorful posters with inspirational quotes and then stuck it up on the walls of the home so the senior citizens will be able read it every day. As we both exchanged friendly but sad goodbyes everyone felt a little gloomy for a few minutes, however, it was a really eye opener for everyone.- Keen

Music Group: Meassa, Enisa, Rebecca, Zuha, Mahnoor, Nifal, Raina

At first, we were told that some of us couldn’t go to the orphanage, due to transportation reasons; therefore we were assigned to another workshop, which was to entertain the old people from a nearby old folks home.

It was sort of a shock for us because we’ve never really had any experience working with the elderlies, but we ended up with several useful ideas. We thought of singing to them and then playing board games with them.

When we reached our destination, we were so excited to meet them. We greeted them immediately as we reached. They were so lovely. It was sorrowful to see these old folks being abandoned by their own families and yet they are still happy.

We preformed to them. We sang songs like “Count on me” by Bruno Mars. They seem really happy. They were smiling and clapping. When we were done preforming, we started playing board games and they liked it a lot! One of them even won in “Connect Four”.- Enisa and Rebecca

Term 1 - 2011/2012

Music group

Katrina, Sarah, Aishwarya, Chelsea, Sofea, Tiffany, Tanisha

“...and this is Community Arts. So let’s get started!” We had no idea what Mr. David and Mr. Ajesh expected out of us. Being the first year to start CA, we had no one else to consult with, so we are glad that we can give a helping hand to future Community Artists. We had to come up with ideas about what our project would be like in our very first lesson of Term 1. With no time to waste, after considering all our options, we chose to deliver dance sessions, as a few of us are dancers ourselves.

As the days passed by, the proposal had finished being drawn up and we came up with our group name. Soles for souls, that’s what we chose. Why? Because we feel that we need to help the people in need to continue ‘walking’ through life, despite their disabilities. Thus, we would like to be the ‘soles’ for the ‘souls’ in need.

-Katrina

On week 4, we were challenged to a ‘Young Project’. In this, we were to deliver a session to the students of Year 1 and 5. The final outcome was unexpected. With the year 5s, it was a ‘disaster’, as Mr. David puts it, with plenty of ethical and health and safety issues, such as holding hands with the children, playing games in the scorching heat, and just generally having a hard time controlling the kids. Learning from previous mistakes, we did much better with the Year 1s. They, and us, had an enjoyable time singing to Spongebob Squarepants and Old MacDonald’s.- Chelsea

On the same week, Adrian Jerome dropped by to give us an eye-opening talk about prisoners and their rehabilitation.

We decided that we wouldn’t like the help to end just like that. We aim to sponsor a child by paying for his educational fees. With RM2080 as our goal, we planned sales. As most of you know, our nachos sale was a complete success. The nachos sold out on the first 10 minutes of break and we decided to hold another sale the next day. That too was successful. We had planned to hold another sale during the netball and football tournament a few weeks before this, but the wet weather didn’t allow us to do so.- Darren

Dance steps have been rehearsed and the last procedure was to confirm which orphanage we picked. Luck didn’t take our side this time around. We have called 8 orphanages, no exaggeration, and all of them turned us down. On the contrary to the boys who got their orphanage on their first call, we had to compromise and visit the same orphanage as the boys, the Agathians Shelter.