PAPER WORKSHOP
Durban — The team from Umcebo Design is excited to be holding their second Fly Me To The Moon recycled paper workshop in collaboration with Manna Café in Glenwood.
Participants will have the opportunity to craft a beautiful mobile using recycled paper and string, featuring celestial elements like the moon and stars.
Robin Opperman, the creative director of Umcebo Design and co-facilitator of the workshop, said: “The concept of Umcebo Design was born out of a long history of working with marginalised people of varying abilities around the idea that art and craft can be elevated to a new level of creativity and, at the same time, generate valuable income for participants.”
Opperman said that while working as an art teacher at Ningizimu School for the Severely Mentally Handicapped, he started the project in the 90s with the idea of roping in community support for art and craft projects in all shapes and forms with a view to generating income and gaining exposure for the art programme.
This then became the seed idea for what was to become Umcebo Trust.
“The theme is creative waste management focused on a specific recycled paper workshop where we make moon and star mobiles out of recycled paper from damaged books from the Denis Hurley Book Project,” Opperman said.
He said he would be assisting participants with his design skills to help them realise the creative and income-generating potential of this kind of creative waste management.
“By the end of the workshop, I want people to have created new contacts and to have the skills so they can realise and release the full potential of creative waste management to develop creativity and income-generating potential for them and their families.”
Umcebo Design creative consultant business partner Ujala Sewpersad said: “The theme is ‘Moon and Stars’. In tough times we always seem to look up for help and guidance. The moon and stars are always a comfort, especially in Durban on warm summer nights.”
Sewpersad is also the lead facilitator for the workshop.
During the workshop, Sewpersad said she’d help show participants how to make three-dimensional stars and a crescent moon ‒which she and Opperman designed.
“By the end of the workshop we hope that participants have fun and realise that art and joy can be achieved from using stuff that we would generally throw away. We hope that they will be inspired to see recycling in a new light,” she said.
Opperman and Sewpersad said the workshop would also encourage the participants to make home-made Christmas gifts as well as teach people a valuable craft skill they can apply to other projects and share with their children.
Umcebo Design will host its second workshop with the aim to utilise recycled material and equip participants with artistic ability. Each participant will receive recycled paper, glue, scissors, pencils and a little palette. Participants will learn to make a 3D moon and stars and also learn how to put them together in the form of a mobile.
The attendance fee for the workshop is R180. Materials as well as a complimentary muffin and coffee will be provided. In the event that reservations are cancelled, the proceeds will go towards sponsoring a homeless bookseller from the Hurley Centre to attend this event.
The Fly Me to The Moon Recycled Paper Workshop will take place on November 10 at Manna Café, Glenwood. It will be held between 10am and 1pm.
Sunday Tribune