Sharjah: Children visiting the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) were taught how to use their imagination and creativity to create 3D animal pop-ups using shreds. Award-winning children’s author and artist from Tunisia, Raouf Karray, believes that if one has imagination and creativity, they can carve out masterpieces from scrap.
Karray taught children between five and 10 years how to create 3D animal pop-ups — all with shreds of paper and some glue and tape during ‘The Art of Agglutination’ workshop.
“I am here because I love to work with children, and make a connection with their daring spirits. My workshops at the festival are focused on introducing children to the history of the collage, and teach them how to develop simple ones in 3D,” she said.
In the course of the workshop, Karray’s aim was to show children how they can use a wide array of environment-friendly materials — from paper scraps, to flowers and even fabric — to create interesting artwork.
Before starting the workshop, Raouf introduced participants and their parents to the history of the collage, the earliest traces of which were found in China — the place where paper was discovered more than 2,000 years ago. Children were shown several techniques on collage-making with different materials, and were also introduced to the works of famous European artists in the field.
The 11-day SCRF will run at Expo Centre Sharjah until April 29. The festival, is an interactive platform that brings together some of the world’s best children’s authors to read their popular works to their fans.
