Creativity a way for young to express themselves

Christina Schott, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Two mountains, a river running down to a valley, some rice fields and houses in the foreground; above all, the sun.

Risky, eleven years old, paints with great enthusiasm what she wishes to see in her surroundings. Of about 80 children living in Kelurahan Paseban, about two-thirds had almost the same idea as Risky, when they painted at the Gambar Anak (children's drawing) festival at the Kelurahan Paseban subdistrict office on Sunday.

The reality is somewhat different: Risky and her friends live in Paseban in the center of Jakarta, where the streets are small and the houses closely packed together, leaving little open space. The railway is directly behind the SMA school building, where the festival took place, and the garbage disposal site is directly in front of the railway.

A kampong like Paseban does not offer much space for children -- playgrounds are hard to find.

Children need the opportunity to express themselves. Their world revolves around playing -- and if there is not enough space to play, they should at least have the chance to express their fantasies through their own creativity", says Sanggar Paseban's Irawati, who initiated the drawing festival, together with her husband, Gallis Agus Sunardi.

The house and studio of the two artists became a kind of playground for the children from the neighborhood, since they have one of the few gardens in the area. Some of the children show a genuine interest in the visual arts. "I think this program is a good way of helping them realize their own skills," says Irawati. "We all want to support the children's creativity," agrees subdistrict head Suaeb Abdul Gani, who has supported the program generously.

"I am very happy that the idea for this event came from people living inside the kampong. They understand best about the needs of the children, given their surroundings."

But to develop creativity needs time, as the experience during the workshops on Sunday showed. The style of the mountain landscape that most of the children drew looked uncannily similar to the illustrations in Indonesian elementary school books.

The few children brave enough to start drawing without a ruler or stencil were often interrupted by their parents. "Dear parents, please allow your children to paint freely without interrupting them," was consequently one of the most repeated announcements by the organizers on Sunday.

Nevertheless, there were some amazing results, the most remarkable, perhaps, by five-year-old Dafi. As one of the youngest participants he created a most expressive painting, entering the list of 12 best pictures, chosen later by friends of Sanggar Paseban.

But this was only the first exercise. The second followed after the lunch break, when the children were asked to paint in teams of four on new plastic dustbins.

"The idea is to built up awareness about the environment," explains Abdul Gani. "If we later on put these colorful dustbins all over Paseban, maybe more people will remember where they should put their waste when they see the paintings of their own children on the bins."

The children obviously enjoyed the colorful and exciting festival, which was well organized. With large markers they explored the form of the garbage bins without any hesitation. They forgot about rulers and stencils and finally let their creativity freely express itself. The results are soon to be seen all over Paseban.