Weekly art classes

This journey started when I wanted to start volunteering in Berlin in my free time. My online search led me to the Freiwilligen Agentur in Pankow. This is an agency that helps to connect organisations with individuals who are interested in volunteering. I had a great first meeting with them in November 2024 and they noted down my areas of interest. I happened to mention that I do art (without expecting anything to come out of it).

A couple of weeks later, they put me in touch with KulturMarktHalle. A week later, I went in to meet with them. I showed them my sketchbook and some other works on my instagram.

At first, I was skeptical about teaching this class. Firstly, I do have experience making art, not teaching. And these are widely different things. And secondly, this class was to be taken in German. Und, mein Deutsch is nicht so gut.

However, they showed a lot of confidence in my work (and my German abilities) and that gave me a lot of confidence. So, I took up the offer.

The classes started in April 2025. I was extremely nervous about my first class. I'd made a list of german words that I'd need in an art class.

For my first class I took print outs of cats in various positions. I had the participates create stylistic drawings from the reference photos. This did not go well. The class had a wide range of expertise. Some participants who sketched often were able to run with the prompt. Others, expected more handholding.

The next few classes I did,

At first, my class format was me teaching a concept (eg. understanding values in colour), and then give them exercises to practice. But, this format did not work because my german was not good enough to engage in monologues, and because people where here to not necessarily to improve their art. People want to spend time in a community, making fun art. That's all this class needs to be.

In one class I played Difficult Pictionary where I gave them the following words to draw,

While difficult, the class enjoyed the exercise.

I started to look at my role as more of a facilitator than a teacher. I would provide activities for the class to engage in and help as and when needed.

This was a lot more fun for the class. I started bringing in printouts of works my illustrators and artists that I liked, and we played around to try and recreate some of those works.

I chose to do watercolours because I believe this is a medium that is easiest to get started with. I also offers a lot of expression by default, since it is unforgiving and makes you commit with your happy accidents.

Dealing with negativity: Some of the participants where feeling not great about the artwork they created. They thought it was subpar and that they were not talented enough to make art. So, one class I took in this piece, which is a paraphrasing from The Artists Way. I read it out to the class, and people loved it! They related to it and during the class even quoted from it when someone was showing negativity during the class.

Art is a vehicle through which we can explore the world, it is a safe space where we can experiment what it feels like to work without stress and to work without expectations because I think true creativity comes when you take your eye off the result and concentrate on what you are doing. It's not a good to habit to constantly think about what you are doing in terms of good or not good. There is a time and space for it, but it is not when you are creating. Art is a good safe space to practice this as a virtue, where you can keep creating without thinking, constantly thinking, whether this good or not good.

Materials I use in my class: Some participants have large watercolour and acrylic sets, and struggle with colour mixing or colour understanding. I wanted to provide a simplified material set.

Coming soon: A PDF of all my class lessons, so people can use this format at other community centres.