Collective Drawing

In short

PIMDI student presentation from the Helsinki Intensive week in 2021.
Encounters with elderly people in care homes. 

Students invited a group of the elderly to a drawing site where the barrier of language was transcended by other means of communication. Creative ways of creating a drawing were explored by students and participants while embracing the difficulties and restrictions caused by impaired physical mobility.  

A table-sized paper was offered as a site of interaction and participants were invited to draw their own hands and someone else´s with the colorful crayons. Then students and the elderly decorated together the outline of their hands and made connections to each other´s drawings. Students assisted the participants with the most difficult movements, offering them their hands to draw and transferring the drawings by stamping on the paper.   

Participants enjoyed the experience of making drawings together with the students and some asked students to draw what they had in mind, connecting the visual elements in the drawing such as a musical note and railway. The drawing proved to be a great medium for the participants to communicate with non-Finnish speaking students and opened a door for participants to encounter the students.   

Authors

Yixue, Kaia, Marit, Maya