Kid’s-patch is an innovative lab, a mini-festival for young people, which is realized by workshops and presentations within the fields of music, graphical art, performance art and modern/new media. By the direct and playful work with children artists get the opportunity to gain new perspectives on the process of creating and presenting creative content. The programs are designed so that it is an innovative and entertaining approach close to children and youth fields of contemporary art and culture.

Ange Taggart’s artist in residence programme in Dundee ended a couple of weeks ago. The Final Gathering event gave the opportunity to get a glimpse of her work involving the Tagtool.

“I’m happy there is now an active group of people keen to utilise the tool in the city. The grand plan is to establish a core Tagtool interest group to support and encourage the use of the tool in the city. Laura Simpson from Nine Trades project will initially communicate with key players to get the ball rolling.”

A photo taken during the double Tagtool session at the Final Gathering.

“I’m delighted to say that a few things are already underway, we have several arts and community organisations with ideas in the pipeline, and at least ten people/organisations who want to build their own Tagtool.”

Amelie at the age of 3 is playing with the Tagtool. She is definitely one of the youngest Tagtool users and obiously enjoying herself, while Ange is taking care of the parents.

“At the moment it would help engage with young people. Especially with those who are not confident with their literacy and not confident with themselves that they are any good at anything. The fact is they can pick up that little pen and do a scribble and we get art at the end of it. It will help the fun element of learning, helping them to mix with other people, team building, there are loads of things it can address.”

Ange also posted some responses she has recieved during the recidency – here is a handwritten letter from enthusiatic parents.

Finally there is a video from the Tagtool session at the Hannah Maclure Centre. It’s a timelapse of Tagtool art at the Guerrilla Gallery launch party. The Tagtool was used by members of the public throughout the night in response to live music from Esperi and Edward Shallow, and a DJ set from Captain Congo.

Also check out the rest of the Nine Trades of Dundee Blog!

Kid’s-Patch is an event series dedicated to new children’s creativity, presented since 2008 at numerous events in Europe and the USA. Each program consists of a series of workshops for kids (ages 5 – 12), related to the fields of contemporary music, graphic art, performance and new media. It is a 100% participatory program that utilizes an intuitive, inventive and forward-thinking approach to children’s creative education within the context of arts and culture.

Curators Nana Radenkovic and Relja Bobic from Belgrade built two Tagtool Minis with valuable support from Masta Cha & Scott Wisdom and used them during their doodlerz.inc workshops traveling around the United States.

Kid’s-Patch: Children’s Creativity Lab at the Biennial of the Americas, a specially commissioned program and the largest KidsPatch production so far, will involve a number of artists from both American continents into creative exchanges with the youngest population. Beside setting up a special kids zone within the McNichols Building which will be open daily, the focus of KidsPatch is customized workshops running each weekend, to be rounded up by a final parade event on July 31st, taking the young participants and their creations outdoors, to the immediate surrounding of the main Biennial location, through a special performance.

See all photos here.

Christian Reiner – voice
Philip Zoubek – piano
Mathias Koch – drums
Maki Dorninger – drawing
Mathias Fritz – animation

Die Sache mit dem Maulwurf – Teil 1
(The Story with the Mole – Part 1)

A bee by the name of Seppi encounters a talking tree in the garden. Their conversation is interrupted by a grumpy nameless mole – it drops a bone and disappears. Puzzled, Seppi goes underground to investigate, and finds the remains of Horst, the skeleton clown. Horst has long given up circus life in favour of making movies. He was lured below earth by the mole, who claimed to be a famous director but then abandoned the movie. In the underground caverns, watched by the stones, Seppi further discovers that the mole has trapped Jean-Paul, the rocket. He manages to free him, and together they wonder – why is the mole causing all this trouble?

Die Sache mit dem Maulwurf – Teil 2
(The Story with the Mole – Part 2)

Seppi finds Barbara, who is usually inseparable from Jean-Paul, but got away when he was trapped, hiding under a cup. Meanwhile the mole decides to cut the talking tree’s roots, which are disturbing him. One of the roots confronts him, and together with Seppi it can convince the troublemaker to stop his senseless hooliganism. They realise loneliness is the reason of the moles behaviour – their friendship is the cure. Finally he agrees to go ahead with shooting the movie – featuring Horst, Seppi, Jean-Paul, Barbara and the root.

Tanz das Krokodil
(Do the Crocodile Dance)

A kid in the audience asks for “Kasperl”… the German equivalent of Punch & Judy. In fact, he wants “a beautiful Kasperl”… an that’s what he gets. Kasperl’s traditional sidekick, the Crocodile, is less esthetically pleasing. But it dresses up all lovely, and together they dance till late at night.

This was achieved with the help of musicians who developed a variety of improvisational performances with school groups all over Styria. Interaction with other art forms was promoted by including dancers and visual artists to integrate movements, pictures, sculptures or videos. The performances were presented at the beautiful venue “Dom in Berg” in the center of Graz on 9th of March 2010.

Wolfgang Hattinger and Daniel Riegler (both composers and musicians) were in charge of one of these groups and invited me to support them with Tagtool visuals. Their project is based on Virtual Conductor II, a software that orchestrates musicians to perform an improvisational show. For every artist there is a monitor that provides the basic guidelines according to a predefined but loose structure.

So my job was to coach two Tagtool teams, and help them develop a visualization concept to the music. We knew about the basic structure of the performance, so we worked out a repertoire of suitable drawing and animation styles, and learned how to deal with mistakes.

After two days of workshops and a final rehearsal we were ready for the show. The group did well and the audience was delighted. I was really impressed with their confident performance in front of around 150 people.

So, a big thank you and congratulations to my group, I enjoyed working with you!!

To the photo gallery!

The story “The best friends” that the kids worked out is about the new student Emely, who has difficulties to find friends in class. After some failed attempts she finally succeeds by giving a nice present to a birthday child of the group.

From my point of view this workshop turned out successfully again: The kids were highly focused and keen on realizing their idea within the short time they got. In the future I’d like to change the mode by working over a longer period of time with the same group of kids, let’s say in four or five sessions. Then we can put more emphasis on developing characters and the story..

Thanks to the young creators (story and drawings): Marjan (8), Simran (9), Uriba (9), Manvil (6), Usama (8)

Also thanks to the team of the Juvivo, who invited me to do the workshop and supported it.

The workshop was part of a running project called “Medienwerkstatt 2009″ (Media-Lab 2009) of Juvivo15, that is kindly financed by Rudolfsheim Fünfhaus and by the youth magistrate of Vienna (MA13).

This time we kept the storyboard of the kids, but recorded the creation and animation of the drawings with a video camera. So the kids could work fluently and integrate spontaneous ideas of orchestration. Afterwards I cut the recordings to a video, that I see as my first reward in my attempt to develop concepts of Tagtool workshops for kids.

“When zwei Herzen schlagen” (“When two hearts beat”) is an intercultural love story between the Turkish boy Abdul Kadir and the Austrian girl Doris Meier. When Abdul asks Doris to marry her, she worries about her father, who expects his son-in-law to be rich and wealthy. So Abdul takes part at a fitness competition with a price money of 10.000 euro. Despite of hard training he doesn’t win the money, and that makes him very sad. But fortunately Doris’ father acknowledges his efforts and gives his blessings for the marriage – happy end!

Thanks to the young creators (story and drawings): Jadranka, Zorica, Nataša, Muhammed, Resul, Ahmet, Duran, Enes, Enes G., Apo, Vasuf, Resul, Ahmet, Salih, Halil.

Also thanks to Zorica Rakic and Hartwig Imlinger of the Juvivo staff, who invited me to do the workshop and supported it.

The workshop was part of a running project called “Medienwerkstatt 2009″ (Media-Lab 2009) of Juvivo15, that is kindly financed by Rudolfsheim Fünfhaus and by the youth magistrate of Vienna (MA13).

This was a concert on May 29th 2009 at Stadtgarten Cologne, with an audience of kids from from various schools. It was the first appearance of CheZo, the zombie mutt , who might or might not be based on a real person. The kids were a little unsure what to make of the performance to begin with, some even starting to discuss out loud whether this is boring or not. But by the end of the 3rd part the guys had clearly won them over.

Christian Reiner – voice
Philip Zoubek – piano
Mathias Koch – drums
Maki Dorninger – drawing
Mathias Fritz – animation

Part 1 – Der Bienenfisch

Seppi the bee discovers a strange fish – a bee fish – in a crate left on the shore by some japanese sailors. Following the bee fish under water, he has to rescue CheZo from a green monster.

Part 2 – Die Prophezeiung des Herrn Pferd

Hilti and the Captain ask Mr. Horse for advice – but his message is cryptic and points them to the planet of Huntopia, where Bratwurst is the favourite dish of its inhabitants. Mr. Horse is a character invented by Thomas Mock aka Keramik.

Part 3 – CheZo hat Termine

CheZo, the Zombie mutt, comes to Seppi the bee to thank him for his earlier rescue from the green monster. Seppi is happy to see him but the dog has to move on, because he has important appointments.

Part 4 – Der Bratwurstbär

A strange creature addicted to Bratwurst appears and eats Hilti’s and the Captain’s stash. Uncle Hatmaker Hun is also fond of Bratwurst but suspects there’s something very, very wrong with the ingredients.

As a youth worker I am interested in developing different concepts of working together with kids on the Tagtool. Considering only the obvious factors like creativity or team-work, I sense an educational value to these attempts.

Last week the kids of the youth club Juvivo15 and I experimented in doing a short stop-trick animation. They prepared a storyboard about a couple in love and worked out some characters. It was stunning to see how concentrated they consequently realized one scene after the other, with a natural understanding about the dynamics of stop-trick animation.

Thanks to the kids (Mohamed, Resul, Ahmed, Ömer und Hasan) for their creative work and to my colleagues Josef, Hartwig and Zori for their great support!

More Photos!