Cultural Elements is an international initiative to bridge the gap between western and eastern culture through mutual understanding and artistic expression. Cultural Elements 2022 featured dual workshops between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Thailand involving each culture visually representing festivals through large scale collaborative drawing.
Two Kingdoms, Two Festivals
A lot of discussion happened between the three organising parties, Seekers Create (UK), King’s Educational Services (Thailand) and J.J Scott Illustration (who acted as an international coordinator and facilitator) about which cultural festivals would be appropriate for the workshops. It was important for us that each festival be either exclusive or specially relevant to that target culture – which ruled out more global festivals such as Christmas and Halloween. The two festivals that the organising parties decided on were Guy Fawkes Night/ Bonfire Night as representative of a UK festival and Loy Krathong (ลอยกระทง) as representative of Thailand.
We felt that these two festivals complimented each other well, there are superficial similarities, such as the use of fireworks, song and geographical connections to a river, but the underlying reasoning and history of each festival couldn’t be farther apart. which allowed for a great opportunity for the students involved to learn and engage with a culture in a way that they may not have done so previously.
Two Workshops
The two workshops took place within five weeks of each other, the first of the two workshops was executed and operated by King’s Educational Services and J.J Scott Illustration, on October the 22nd 2022. The workshop was split into three different sessions through out the day, each being partitioned into two one hour sections. The first section gave a brief overview of both festivals before focusing in on Loy Krathong, which many of the Thai students would have ready be in common with and find easy to conjure up typical imagery surrounding the festival. after a 10 minute break between sessions, the students moved onto their English festival, Guy Fawkes Night. Many of the older students recognised the iconography of the Guy Fawkes mask (As popularised by famed graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd) the students confessed that they recognised the imagery because of it’s prevalence with online hacker communities and were surprised when they discovered it’s historical relevance. Many of the younger students became concerned around the imagery and concepts surrounding the burning of Guy Fakwes, the clash between the spiritual elements of Loy Krathong and the overtly political nature of Guy Fawkes Night did not escape the minds of even the younger children.
The workshop involved two miniture lectures regarding the cultural impact of each festival interspersed with collaborative drawing on large pieces of paper. The art pieces created by the students were partitioned between the two festivals, some pieces linked each side with a river, representing the Thames in London and the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. The workshop day was bookended with a zoom call between King’s Educational Services, Seekers Create, J.J Scott Illustration and two selected students to give their thoughts on the workshops themes. The students in question were two teenagers, one Thai male student and one female Chinese student, this gave an insightful and textured understanding of the two festivals and the comparisons between their themes.
The UK workshop was facilitated by Seekers Create in Fratton, Portsmouth, supported by Delivered Social on November the 18th 2022, the day Loy Krathong was celebrated this year. This workshop was operated in collaboration with MAKE from the Aldingbourne trust, an innovative project supporting adults with learning difficulties and autism. Through the guidance of Clair Martin, Steve Baker and Sarah Mitas the group explored their understanding of the shared cultural elements between the two festivals
The Next Step
During June 2023, all artwork regarding this project will be collected and exhibited in Portsmouth, UK to celebrate the interaction between the two cultures.
jjscottillustration.co.uk 