How do you like celebrating Valentine’s Day? Is it with flowers, chocolates, or a cinema date with the other half? Did you forget about the whole day and promptly buy a bunch of roses and a simple card on the day? Prefer to go it solo? Or do you enjoy a Galentine’s celebration?
At Art For Fun, we believe all forms of love, whether romantic, platonic, self-love and with any gender, are all valid. We also celebrated Valentine’s Day in our own special way! Marie, who led our Matisse cut-outs workshop and taught us about Vincent Van Gogh, led our session on 12th February. In this session, we were shown how to make Heart Shrine boxes!
How we created our Heart Shrine Boxes
Heart shrine boxes are made out of cardboard and fabric. To make the base of these shrines, participants could draw a template or freehand their own base. Once the base was done, they could add the inner box, which would act as a holder for a photo or any trinkets they brought with them.
Once the parts were stuck together with some heavy-duty glue such as UHU, then they could be decorated any way people wanted. People created unique and personal designs, each with their own personal touch. I noticed many people used the provided gems as decoration. One of my favourites was a Heart Shrine Box dedicated to Galentine’s Day!
We wanted the boxes to be fully customisable because we’d be using photos or trinkets that remind us of the people we loved, and that kind of connection is personal. There’s no point in putting the heart into the box and then gutting it of what makes that connection and person special to our participants. Plus, it would be pretty boring otherwise, and our name isn’t Art For Fun for nothing!
Below are some photos from the workshop, and you can click here to see our Instagram reel!
Happy Lunar New Year!
We explored Chinese culture at Art For Fun in 2024, when visiting artist Pau Ling showed us how to write Chinese Calligraphy. (You can read about that workshop here .) Frankie, one of our amazing volunteers, wanted to expand on that!
“Our group is always interested in learning about other cultures, and we’ve celebrated the Chinese New Year with a workshop before. This year, I wanted to introduce the group to more of its history and meaning, which is why we discussed The Great Race and our birth year animals.”
Which, honestly, was very exciting because, yes, I had learnt how Lunar New Year worked in Primary school, but over time I had forgotten those details. Important parts of the story, like the fact that the order of the animals is based on who won the race across the river. Even the order in which they won! The only thing I knew was which animal I was and which animal’s turn it was this year… It’s the Horse. (Yes, I can hear the horse girls celebrating that news just as much as you!)
You may think getting the Horse is a short straw because it got 7th in the Jade Emperor’s Great Race, but in reality, the Horse in the Chinese Zodiac is: Energetic, independent, popular, freedom-loving and Hardworking.
Planning
Readers, you may assume that running our workshops is simple: pick a subject, get materials and lead the session. However, that’s not true! Lots of planning goes into the artist-led workshops (in this case, volunteer-led). People running our workshops have to consider whether the activity will work for a range of skill levels and abilities. They also have to think about adaptations and the materials. This leads to a lot of planning and double-checking that the activities are suitable. And then working out how much printing is needed!
So, before the session, Frankie created her own version of the activity. She had a paper cut-out of her animal, which was a Monkey. In the middle of the paper, then around it were all the things she was hoping to find or receive throughout the year. It looked unique and made me really excited for our group to attempt it when the session happened. Planning it this way enables us to see the finished result and to put it into practice, identifying where we may need to make things simpler or change how we explain the session to the group.
Frankie chose this activity because “In addition to learning about Chinese culture, the activity encouraged connection and self-reflection across our group, in support of their wellbeing.”
During the session, each participant would have a couple of worksheets: one explaining the legend of The Great Race, and the other showing the placement of each animal in the Chinese Zodiac alongside the key characteristics. Using their birthdate, participants would then work out which animal on the Lunar New Year calendar they are. With that information, participants would then create an image of their animal and, around it, draw or write down the things they were looking forward to for the year.
Here are the two worksheets provided to attendees:
Artwork, observations and connections
During the session, many of our participants created personal and thoughtful creations, many of which you’ll see below. However, we noticed that the artworks, whilst beautiful, weren’t the only amazing things to come out of the session; it was actually the connections made through the activity!
“People enjoyed comparing and discussing their birth year animals and what the different characteristics meant to them. Commonalities and differences were recognised and celebrated alike.”
I did notice we had a lot of Dragons in our group!
As you can see, there was a huge variety in how participants showed us their Zodiac signs. Not only did this workshop increase our knowledge of Chinese culture, but it was also a workshop where we all felt more connected and practised mindfulness, working out what we truly wanted to get from the year. It’s also a really easy activity to do at home with a piece of paper and a pen, even!
It was also delightful trying to figure out where we all landed in the Great Race, what our Animal was, and what that meant for our personality.
Thank you for reading our February update for Art For Fun. Click here to see our updates on Instagram! Promise me you’ll keep those eyes peeled for our March update, where we step into Spring with Alex Katz, and I will have some exciting news to share!
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