ArtFactory Artist’s Residency, Israel [2012]
A community art project with a group of 50+ most of whom were migrants.
The group was not interested in any art activities, but they did want to tell their stories of their migration, especially to their grandchildren. They were also interested in finding ways to get their grandchildren off their computers and TV screens. I have chosen to bring together the Steeplechase’s children's street game known in Israel as 3 Sticks and storytelling.
3 Sticks is a street game in which 3 twigs are put next to each other with small gaps between them. The gaps widen more and more as the game goes on and the participants need to jump over the sticks and land between the gaps. Getting over these hurdles/sticks denoted the hurdles the participants had to go through in their journey of migration.
During the three months workshops they told the stories and created small collages from photos they had or which we found online that depicted the places they migrated from or from their journeys. They drew or copied these collages onto narrow planks of wood and the grandchildren helped in copying the short stories’ texts next to the images.
The illustrated planks of wood were used in the closing event for an inter-generational Steeplechase game.