Women’s Hands

“Women’s Hands” is an artistic workshop for women of all ages, cultures and nationalities, which aims to foster inclusion and full social participation, through handicraft activities using recycling materials as well as collective and participatory autobiographical storytelling

Trainers’ methodologies alternate between art therapy and storytelling to support migrant women in the inclusion and integration into the Italian community, promoting awareness of their creative and expressive skills, developing their self-confidence and fostering their empowerment in all areas of their private and professional life.

Women of all ages, nationality and cultural backgrounds, migrants and/or victims of abuse.

• Design, creation and production of ornaments, trinkets and decorative accessories
• Creativity and artistic-creative potential development
• Use of recycling materials
• Enhancing handicraft skills and supporting the development of creative activities involving interpersonal relations and the production of objects, team-working skills aimed at promoting everyone’s initiative and work.

Recycling materials, fabric cuttings, buttons, ribbons, wool and cotton threads, paints, coloured sheets of paper, markers and acrylic dyes, brushes, Das, white glue, a speaker for listening to music during warm-up activities.

Trainers collect recycling materials, purchase necessary consumables (brushes, paints, white and other glues, paper etc.) to be stored in a safe place at the workshop venue for convenient access whenever needed. They will set up a large work table and two additional smaller tables to display all materials available

This workshop consists of 6 meetings, aimed at developing and delving into each phase of the project, structured as follows:

Phase 1
it includes an ice-breaking activity, supervised by the facilitators, aimed at getting to know each other, in order to put all women at ease by breaking down any kind of judgmental attitude or prejudice. This is done by playing games and activities to establish a relaxed and joyful atmosphere. At this stage, participants play a game in pairs in which they tell each other a short episode of their lives, following the trainers’ suggestions such as: childhood memories and games, family, school, travel, friendships, traditions and cultures of one’s own country, cooking recipes, music. Background music facilitates this activity.

Phase 2
Second phase by the Art Teacher who, starting from the participants’ previous experiences and skills, teaches and shares techniques for the creative production of objects based on Art Therapy. Memories and feelings emerged during the first phase served as an inspiration for designing the handicrafts.

The warming-up phase is very important to create a positive and friendly working atmosphere in the classroom and also helps to overcome language barriers, so it is important to allocate adequate time to this activity.

It is very important to choose a simple first artistic technique which will allow participants to make and complete their own object by the end of the following meeting, in order to gratify participants, to boost their confidence in their own abilities and to motivate them all to continue participating in the workshop. We have indeed noticed that presenting more than two or three techniques throughout the workshop does not allow any of them to be mastered, and there is a risk that some work will remain unfinished.

It became clear during this workshop that the best choice for achieving expected results and proceeding effectively with work is to devote two meetings to each specific technique, in order to master its procedures and finish the chosen object. By the end of the six meetings, participants will have properly learnt three techniques and will have produced three or more objects each.

Alternatively, for those techniques that require a drying or hardening time of the used materials, we can present two techniques, start preparing two objects during the first meeting, and finalise them during the second and third meeting.

The group may consist of up to 15 persons.

Difficulty degree 3