CHILDREN DRAW A SHTETL

MINSK, NOVEMBER 22, 2010 (JEWISH NEWS AGENCY) The Fourth International
Children Art Forum Rebirth of a Shtetl took place in Minsk. It was organized by the Union of
Belarusian Jewish Public Association and Communities and supported by the European Jewish
Fund.
This year twenty three teenagers at the age of fourteen-seventeen participated in it. They were
from eight countries: Estonia, Moldova, Belarus, Israel, Serbia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
We often hear about the activities of the communities, but it is not often possible to see the work
from within. One can think that it might be very easy. Here is the work: the art forum took place,
the children came, they drew and left.
If I had described only what I saw from the outside or had listened to the stories of the
participants I would not have had the real idea.
That is why I myself decided to take part in the Art Forum and together with the organizers and
participants made tours, drew, painted ceramic tiles, that means that I experienced all these
stirring events myself. Mainly I did not listen to the answers to the correspondents questions,
but saw the expression of feelings and emotions.
It turned out that the main thing was not what the children saw during those three days and what
they drew later, but how organizers and teachers communicated with them, what they talked
about and what they wanted to carry to them.
Young artist can see and feel differently in comparison with adults.
The teachers, like an architect Galina Levina (who was the idea-monger and the organizer of this
remarkable event), tried to teach the children to express their feelings and emotions during the
process of drawing sincerely and to use bright colors.
For the teenagers at the Art Forum every day was a discovery that made the adults see the world
in a different light too.
Very often young people make out splendid things in habitual and sometimes in plain things
when we, adults, pass by.
During the work of the Art Form I met twenty three worlds, each with its own range of feelings,
views and emotions.
These twenty three girls saw the world through the prism of their upbringing, the mentality of
ones country, made the acquaintance of shtetls in Belarus, felt their history, that is the joy of life
and the pain of the Holocaust.
Their works were as the result of their impressions and emotional experience. Sometimes they
were either unexpected or just unsophisticated, but all of them were extraordinary.
The teenagers drew the history of the shtetls. Thy might have not fully realized the importance
and seriousness of what they were doing, that they were retaining a small piece of the Jewish
history.

In ten or twenty years we might lose these places forever or they might be changed beyond
recognition. And the Jewish coloring and spirit might be razed to the ground.
But the childrens drawings might remain the only memorial chronicle about the Jewish life in
Belarus.
While I was speaking with an architect Galina Levina, the authoress and the leader of the
Project, about the aim of the Art Forum, she told me that main thing was individual work with
each of the teenagers.
And it is really so. Each of them was paid much attention to and was given every
encouragement. Everyone tried to teach and to support them and sometimes it was quite possible
to encourage them to improvise easily, to believe in oneself and in that that any drawing was
beautiful, either it was on a canvas or a piece of paper.
In the course of the Are Forum the participants acquainted with creative work of the outstanding
Jewish artists like Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Matthew Basov and many others.
The principal thing that we understood is that children need Art Forum. It is interesting to them
and gives them a creative impulse. The children go back home with new contacts and with new
creative ideas. For many of them it is a new stage of knowledge and development of the Jewish
culture inside of a community in different countries, Galina Levina said. And it also seems to
me that it is very important for the guys to feel that not only their communities take care of them,
but also the communities of the whole world. At the same time Art Forum enables the children to
get knowledge and to be developed as creative personalities.
The concern for the children and attention to their personalities and individuality was seen
during the realization of the whole Project.
According to the participants, they remember all the trips round Belarus and each of them left a
sign of joy and sadness in ones heart.
The House of Children Creativity in a town of Smilovichi gave pleasure for a while and
especially surprised by a museum of a famous Jewish artist Chaim Soutine.
The girls had an excursion and the teachers with their pupils gave a master class on how to felt
valenki. The participants of the Art Forum liked it so much, that it was difficult to take them
back to the bus even after an hour and a half lesson.
During the days of Art Form the participants got unusual impressions, pleasant contacts and
associations.
On the last day, at the round-table discussion on the topic The History of the Jewish Art of My
Country, everyone sincerely thanked the organizers for holding the Forum and for giving an
opportunity to them to take part in it.
In conclusion both teenagers and adults expressed a desire for coming back to Belarus in 2011 in
order to take part in the next Forum.

Olga Zagadskaya