Children's art raises funds for charity

American pop artist James Rizzi would be delighted to see the works of art created by children in Dubai. Clearly inspired by his famous 3D constructions on cityscapes, the youngsters' artwork depicts a busy day on Jumeirah beach and is made of colourful paper cut-outs of people, cars, boats and street scenes pasted together to depict a typical city landscape.

The artwork at the annual art exhibition at the Bechara studio in the Green Community is truly colourful. Along with the Rizzi-inspired Jumeirah beach display there is a large snail made out of coloured clothes pegs, macaroni and tissues. Sharing its wall is a vibrant rainforest created with spray paint and a stencil art with sequins and glitter.

Each piece is distinctive and colourful, and I am amazed at the creativity and skill of the artists.

The exhibition is organised by The Children's Garden (TCG), a pre-school in Dubai. Called Caravan of Colours, it showcases pieces of art made by kindergarten students of the school.

Almost everywhere I look I see colour. And lots of it. I am surprised to learn that the creators of these eye-catching canvases are three- to five-year-olds!

The highlight of the exhibition is a silent auction of selected artwork where 50 per cent of the proceeds go to charitable organisations. The remaining money is used to buy supplies for the art department.

The most sought after person at the exhibition is the dynamic and vocal Birgit A Ertl, the founder director of TCG and the brainchild behind Caravan of Colours. A tireless crusader of early education, Ertl, a former teacher and art lover, combined her two passions to form TCG in 2005.

Bringing dreams to life

The TCG curriculum is founded on the belief that inside each child is an artist and therefore all children should be encouraged to imagine, create and experiment.

And that is what the children in her school have been doing - imagining, creating and experimenting with colours to create works of art. Ertl on her part has been realising her dream as well - doing something for society.

"I've always wanted to do something for the local people of the Middle East. To give back to the region that has given me so much," says Ertl, who arrived in Dubai in 2004 to set up her multilingual school in this melting pot of cultures. Her desire found a cause when she met Lilianne Donders a few years ago.

Donders, a resident of Oman, had set up a trust called the Caravan of Hope to create awareness about breast cancer among Bedouin women in the Middle East.

"Lilianne has been an inspiration for me. She is a breast cancer survivor and her noble efforts impressed me," says Ertl.

Keen to do something to raise awareness about breast cancer, Ertl decided to raise funds for the Caravan of Hope through a silent auction at the Caravan of Colours.

At the silent auction, boxes bearing the titles of each of the paintings for sale are placed on a table. Bidders write their names and contact details, with their bid, on a slip of paper and drop it into the box, which is opened after the exhibition. The highest bid gets the painting.

"Last year, we raised Dh5,900 from the exhibition, half of which was donated to the Caravan of Hope. In the previous years we have generated close to Dh10,000. From a highest bid of Dh6,000 to a lowest bid of Dh5, we have had several takers for art work made by our students," says Ertl.

The money donated to Caravan of Hope through the auction has been invaluable to Donders, who has been using it to improve facilities at her Well Woman's Clinic for Bedouin women in Palmyra in Syria. She also has plans to set up another such clinic for women in Palestine.

Donders is an ardent admirer of the TCG curriculum and the creativity of its students. "I have been visiting the exhibition every year and I come back feeling wonderful and amazed at the creations made by the little hands at TCG. I have a few of their art works in my own home," she says.

This year the proceeds of the auction will go to Start, a non-profit organisation that uses art to enrich the lives of underprivileged children in the Middle East, as well as to Room to Read, an organisation that focuses on literacy and gender equality in education in developing countries.

Using art to teach every subject

Like these two organisations that work for education and art, Ertl too is passionate about creative art, languages and childhood education. With the firm belief that childhood should be a journey and not a race, she has pioneered a unique concept called the International Curriculum for Languages and Creative Arts that helps engage children to evolve in a multicultural environment and to "think out of the box''. Parents can choose from English, German and Arabic as language options for their children.

The school is in that sense multilingual and uses the medium of art to teach every subject.

"I believe that visual activities are key to language acquisition," says Ertl. "The brain first sees a picture, out of which comes the language. The children, too, easily connect with images." The exhibition celebrates each child's artistic and creative development through the year.

The selected works for the auction took about a week's time to complete. The children used poster colours, crayons, acrylic, sequins, glitter and many other colourful materials for their work. The exhibition was put together by the teachers and staff of TCG. One of the parents, Emaad Bechara, himself an artist, let TCG use his studio in the Green Community.

On the opening day of the exhibition the studio was choc-a-bloc with parents, teachers and artists. "I feel inspired and proud of this event," says Magda Breen, a mother of three boys, one of whom studies at TCG.

The exhibition was well-attended by over 200 admirers of the TCG art works.

"We collect the best art work throughout the year for the Caravan of Colours," explains Tamara Eger, art co-ordinator of TCG Green Community.

Urging children to learn by doing

Born in a small town near Innsbruck, Austria, Ertl has 18 years of teaching experience in various parts of the world including Germany, Austria, Thailand, Spain, Hong Kong, the UK and USA. Her earlier charitable efforts saw her work for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong and with mothers affected with Aids in Thailand.

She has a post-graduate certificate in international school education from Oxford Brookes University, and was fond of design, fashion and art from an early age. At TCG Ertl combined her two interests of early childhood and creativity. The emphasis in her school is on hands-on training and experimentation that urges children to learning by doing - a methodology that involves each child and lets him/her interpret everything his/her way.

"Creativity is brought into every approach, which helps children to identify and retain what they learnt," explains Ertl. Even mathematics is taught through an artistic perspective. For instance in a maths class, children learn by counting flowers in a maths garden. The concepts [of addition and subtraction] are introduced through the medium of puppetry. They also have certain days earmarked as ‘market days' when students learn to buy things from one another using real money. It helps them learn fractions, subtraction, addition and multiplication, concepts that are necessary in day-to-day life.

According to Ertl, in a city like Dubai that boasts children from different parts of the globe, one needs a medium as powerful as art to inspire curiosity and to stimulate senses.

The children are also introduced to works of famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Andy Warhol in the school. "We make our students look at the art work of these artists, read about them in our art library, see videos to learn about the materials they used in their paintings, what inspired their creations and about their background and in the end let them interpret what they understood through art," says Ertl.

True to the image of an art-dominant school, the classrooms also look vibrant with posters and art works displayed in every nook and cranny. In one of the classrooms four-year-old Moza is busy painting a blue sky and a yellow sun with golden rays. After daubing a few colours on the canvas, she steps back and pauses to admire her work. I choose that moment to ask her if she knows that her paintings will help poor children. She looks up at me, her eyes large and sparkling, before nodding her head.

I was not sure whether she understood the impact of what she and her classmates had done and how their art works are making a difference in the world, but one thing I was sure of: Moza is truly proud of her work.