Creative Days

Creative Days is a 3-day workshop implemented with the aim of increasing the competences of young people in the field of art and creative industry.

The aim of the activities was to acquaint students with visual media and the possibilities of expressing themselves creatively through the medium of photography and video. Strengthen cooperation between students at school, learn to work together on common ideas, immerse yourself in artistic improvisation and the creative process. During these days, students have space for free creation, self-expression and improvisation. They have opportunities to try different creative processes and techniques and develop their imagination and creativity. Face the challenges of cooperation, making compromises and agreements and try professions from the artistic world of film and photography.

Creative days are led by experienced lecturers and experts in photography and visual art: Soňa Sadloňová and Terézia Matkuliaková. In 2023, almost 140 young people had the opportunity to experience a series of visual creation workshops at elementary schools: ZŠ Slatinské lazy, ZŠ Bakomi, ZŠ Pliešovce, ZŠ Detva, Zaježovská school.

The first day of the series of visual creation workshops began with an introductory circle where the lecturers and the schedule of the following workshop days were introduced. For inspiration and understanding of the workshop and what will happen, and what the group will create together, the work of the students from the previous workshops will be shown. Subsequently, with the help of an interactive presentation, students will become familiar with the basics of visual language. In a playful way, the students will learn the basics about the size of shots, they will learn concepts such as the whole, detail, etc., and they will also learn about the importance of light and composition.

The following is a division into two stations:

At the "photo" station, students immerse themselves in working with luminography, learn about long exposure and luminography, and try painting with light in practice. Improvisation and group teamwork alternate with specific technical knowledge about aperture, time and the possibilities they offer.

At the "video" station, students create picture scenarios for short animated films. They will learn what cinematic speech is, how to tell a story using images, and why visual cinematic speech is a universal language. Through group work, they create stories together, which they draw in storyboards. The challenge they face is to find a common compromise and agree on the creation of a joint work.

During the next workshop, students at the "photo" station are engaged in post-production editing of photos in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop programs. They will learn the basic adjustments to the tonality and color of a photograph. Pupils also become familiar with the new AI Generative fill function in Photoshop and experience the possibilities of using artificial intelligence in a photo. They will try out in practice how to delete parts of a photo and add elements generated by artificial intelligence to the photo. The day is also dedicated to digital SLR cameras and working with them. Pupils have the opportunity to try photography in practice, use different focal lengths of lenses and focus on photographing natural details, on games with a wide-angle lens.

At the "video" station, they experience animation through the pixalation technique, when characters, paper, plasticine, toys, Legos, books, hockey sticks, balls, etc. come to life. The stories that the students prepared together and drew in storyboards are implemented in practice. They also use the acquired theoretical knowledge in the field of light, composition and image size directly in practice in a portable video studio. Pupils practice film speech and at the same time try different film professions. They will experience what it's like to be a cameraman, puppeteer, director, lighting designer or screenwriter. During pixalation, they also develop accuracy and patience and enjoy small but precise forward movements.

On the third day, the photo station will be transformed into a photographic portrait studio. Pupils learn to work with a model, they learn different types of portrait lighting with studio lights in studio conditions, they try out the roles of photographer, lighting, and model.

The video station on the third day is focused on post-production. Students learned to work in the Adobe Premiere Pro program, where, in addition to working with a photo and converting it to a video, they will experience graphic work, color correction, music and sound post-production. Pupils also work with gifs, through which they created simple effects in short animated films.

During the final circle, we make a joint cinema where we show the created works, short animated films, photos, pixalations and luminographies, we recap what we went through together during the creative days, what we learned and we give each other feedback.

We implemented the event through the Zaježovňa project, which was supported by grants from the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic in the field of youth work, which is administered by NIVAM - the National Institute of Education and Youth.