The day started with a Drawing Workshop with Brian Dougan and a Painting Workshop with David Hewitt. The two workshops began with a tour by curator Claudia Pestana of the show titled What Should I Do To Live In Your Life? in Bait Al Serkal. The two groups then moved on to different locations within the space and began translating what they saw through drawing and painting. In the Drawing Workshop, the participants sketched what they observed using lines and shapes. In contrast, the Painting Workshop was more of an experiment with oil painting and acrylics. The participants selected an image and painted it throughout the duration of the workshop.
The Photography and Collaging Workshop with Ebtisam Abdulaziz started with a tour of Ziad Antar’s Portrait of a Territory, which features photographs of the UAE coastline taken between 2004 and 2011. After the tour, Abdulaziz took the group on a photographic exploration of the Sharjah Port and the Heritage Area where each participant was given the chance to photograph what they liked. Through the use of different materials such as paint, ink, aluminum paper, magazines and unused fabric, the participants used their image to create a collage of the coastline.
In the Arts Area, facing Sharjah Art Museum, participants in Hitesh Kanwar’s Paper Quilling Workshop were having a novel experience in an experimental workshop that introduced the art of rolling paper into numerous forms and shapes. Hitesh Kanwar began by explaining what Paper Quilling is: the creation of decorative designs using strips of paper that are rolled, shaped and glued together. Kanwar showed the participants sample works and started to demonstrate how to achieve similar results. Paper quilling involves rolling thin strips of paper into a circular form and altering its shape once it's glued together. The participants really enjoyed experimenting with this new art form.
The Origami Workshop was held for participants over the age of eight. Reem Al Awdah, the instructor, began the workshop by demonstrating on an A3 sized paper the technique of making origami - the art of folding and transforming a flat sheet of paper into a finished sculpture. Al Awdah took a step-by-step approach in order to help the participants understand the process and keep track of the steps needed to make an origami sculpture.