Almost 40 students enjoyed ‘Spring Festival’ at Girls Creativity Center, one of the leading artistic creativity institutions for citizens and expats in Qatar.
The centre aims at teaching girls arts and crafts and to promote their outstanding talent. It provides all materials and special assistance to achieve their goals.
Sawsan Al Shaar, pottery teacher at the Girls Creativity Center told The Peninsula that the experience students got in the past few days was very exciting. “Students got an opportunity of learning pottery in two weeks. I had ten local students,” she said.
She said that clay was used with many different techniques including PINCH — using fingers to pinch and poke a single lump of clay into any shape; SLAB — rolling the clay into flat sheets (like a pie crust) to cut apart and assemble; COIL — rolling out long snakes of clay and twisting them into coils and shapes; and WHEEL — spinning clay on a potter’s wheel to form pots and vases.
“During spring festival we used ‘Earthenware’ for pottery classes. This is the type of clay that comes in white or red and it is heated to a temperature of approximately 1,000 degrees Celsius,” she further noted.
The centre is divided into five departments: painting, pottery, creative club, skills and small enterprises and Qatari heritage development. Spring festival was designed with different activities. The activities are for the girls aged between 7 and 14 years old.
Qatari students get free admission in the centre, whereas expats have to pay QR500 per month for 12 classes and kids have to pay QR300 per month.
Skills and Small Enterprises Section of the centre include ceramic, painting, stitching and junior section.
Ceramic section has a clay flower making session in which the instructor teaches students how to prepare the clay and add colour in it and make flowers from that stuff. “These 11 local students have been enjoying the spring festival’s special classes.
They made ceramic boxes and its tops are decorated with cutting of flowers in the first week. Now they are ready to make clay flowers for flower bands and jewellery,” said Laila Al Anni, a teacher of ceramic section at the centre.
Sabah Noor Ud Din, teacher of Kids section, said: “In the first week of Spring Festival, kids made hand-made dolls and by the last week of the festival they are learning how to make necklace and bookmarks.”
Dr Nidhal, another teacher at centre said that during first week, he gave students classes on stitching. “We decorated simple baskets and hand-fans by doing stitches with woolen thread, second week we are teaching them how to decorate jars and plastic-baskets with the help of paper and stickers. These hand-made decorations are usually used in the holy month of Ramadan. Traditional things look more beautiful with these hand-made décor.”
Al Bandari, young student at centre’s painting section said: “These are colours that cannot be created through the mixing of other colours. They are original colours. The three primary colours are red, yellow and blue. Today we are leaning how to mix primary colours and create new colors.”
“Spring week ends with a special trip which includes outdoor exercises for all students. First week was filled with exciting activities for students which included hand-made art activities and cupcake baking session. The second week was related to painting and ceramic activities and students went to watch movie at Royal Plaza. Overall the students have enjoyed and had a wonderful journey of two week filled with excitement and knowledge,” said Hiyam Ismaile, Media Coordinator at the centre.
