THE PROVERB SESSIONS

The Proverb Sessions began in southeast Turkey in the autumn of 2014. Working with longtime friends and partners, the Turkish NGO, Hayata Destek/Support to Life we produced the first session in Hatay. This was more of a pilot project to see if it could work, and it did to an extent. You can see the original project here. 

 

The following year we returned again to produce two more sessions: one in Batman, with Yazidi refugee youth, and the other with Syrian refugee youth once more in Hatay. You can see these films here.

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Simply, the project understands, deconstructs and reconstructs into short films, local proverbs on a variety of subject matters. Working in groups of around 12 participants, over the course of 2 weeks in each location, we produced a series of participant generated short films. At the end of each film we had an Oscar Ceremony, where we screened the films and participants received their plastic Oscars.

 

Our mission in producing this project is to put in place the structures for non-formal creative education, to facilitate the self expressions and imaginations of a group of young participants. The process of participation allows them to work together - designing, acting, shooting, editing, critiquing and celebrating together. By acting out the narrative of the proverb in their own unique way young participants are able to explore a world outside of the classroom, free to be whoever or whatever they choose to be. By structuring the project in such a way as to promote peer-to-peer educating, whereby some students take the role of teacher to others, we are able to promote leadership, youth empowerment and a different way of learning. We hope they remember this for years to come.

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In February 2017, in order to broaden the reach of The Proverb Sessions, Picture People partnered with a small NGO called Kilaha, on the island of Camiguin in the Philippines. Here we are working alongside the Department of Education and local schools to produce 5 different sessions with 40 participants aged between 14 and 16. Each session allows the participants to explore their world, resurface traditional proverbs, travel across the island and create works that speak of the culture, the nature, the people and old local traditions. It is intended that these works be used in the classroom to teach, amongst other subjects, Values. Using our methodology, alongside the Philippino education system we hope to leave behind an audio-visual legacy where school students will be proud of their achievements as well as creating visual testimony to the island's rich heritage.

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In the three months on Camiguin, we worked in 3 schools in different parts of the island, with groups of 8-10 kids aged between 14 and 16. The participants, boys and girls, worked in pairs to produce the films. The results - the films, the photos, the stories - are all here on this website. At the end of each session, we screened the films in the schools, and invited the local community to come and watch.

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Enjoy!