Concordia’s Mosaic Interim Students Hold the World Above their Heads in the Australian Embassy’s “Beijing Green” event
One of The Hutong Education’s most innovative and engaging Beijing-based programs, our Mosaic Interim “Creative Arts, Theatre & Design” program welcomed another 19 gifted and enthusiastic students from Concordia International School Shanghai.
Our second consecutive year running this creative arts program, The Hutong welcomes this unique opportunity to bring together some of Beijing’s most respected entrepreneurs, professionals and an inter-connected web of pioneering, innovative minds in the city’s creative industries. Working with incredibly talented and respected artists from filmmakers art consultants, improv performers, mime artists, water calligraphers, Shadow Puppet Masters, Peking Opera performers and face painters, The Hutong organized and facilitated workshops in Beijing’s most art and design-focused creative hubs:
- 798 Art District: Born from the hollow hulks of decommissioned military factory structures in northeast Beijing, today 798 stands as one of the best places in the city to see the contrast between old and new Beijing and how far the city has come by visiting contemporary art galleries and studios housed in former communist-era factory zone.
- Aside from a tour of 798’s popular galleries like UCCA, Long March and 798 Art Space, The Hutong facilitated a photography challenge on 798’s lesser-known Sky Walk, where students sought out to find and capture contrasts like modern vs. ancient, growth vs. decay, man-made vs. natural and order vs. disorder.
- Caochangdi Artist Colony: Meaning “grasslands” in Chinese, Caochangdi was once only home to migrant workers, students and farmers. Recently, as artists have started moving to the area and setting up studios, the neighborhood has made a name for itself as the developing creative hub, especially with famous artist Ai Weiwei taking the lead in building much of the modern architecture.
- During their visit to Caochangdi (CCD), students split into smaller groups to create, disseminate and put back together each other’s mosaic interpretations of relevant historical figures based on an art installation in the Three Shadows Photography Gallery. Students were inspired by the photo exhibition and installation by Tim Yip, who not only is one of the most provocative contemporary artists, but in commercial projects he also works successfully as art director. Yip won an Academy Award for his work on Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The students were challenged by Yip’s photographs of a mannequin placed in life-like circumstances, raising questions about the nature of truth, deception, appearance, artifice and reality.
- Dashilar District – the quickly developing former red light district where crowds of creative and pioneering architecture and design firms are now currently based and also where the annual Beijing Design Week hosts pop-up boutiques, breweries and designer tea-houses that appear for just one week.
- In the hutongs of Dashilar, students created their own 6-second vine videos under the guidance and support of accomplished filmmakers.
- In the afternoon, students learned the value of preservation and design through an up-cycling workshop where student turned discarded materials into practical and creatively designed furniture. They turned old glass bottles into candle holders and light fixtures and they took old chairs and discarded baijiu container lids into smart-looking stools.
Beyond the confines of Beijing’s creative industry hubs, The Hutong also ran improv and miming workshops in one of Beijing’s oldest theatres, a storytelling workshop in a hidden performing space behind Beijing’s Drum and Bell Tower and team-building activities alongside the traditional Chinese art of Qigong in Beijing’s lush green parks.
Highlighting traditional Chinese art forms, The Hutong introduced students to the art of Shadow Puppetry alongside Dumpling Making in a Shadow Puppet Boutique Hotel tucked away in the Shichahai neighborhood. After seeing a few examples of professional Shadow Puppet performances, students had the opportunity to create their own shadow puppet characters and weave their own stories to showcase their creations in their very own shadow puppet performances.
Through workshops hosted by The National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts, students practiced the stylized movements of both female and male Peking Opera characters followed by a Peking Opera mask painting workshop where they all painted the mischievous Monkey King.
On The Hutong‘s own turf, our very own culinary chef led a carving and plating workshop where students got crafty in the kitchen and we found ourselves among some pretty promising food carvers!
Alongside the plating and carving workshop, other students took part in a Tea Art Workshop where they sampled different Chinese teas and created their own medley of tea ingredients for their own tea brand creation.
Water Calligraphy Workshop within the walls of one of our favorite Beijing temples – The Confucius Temple:
Saving the best for last, we finished our Mosaic Interim program with a day out in Huairou in conjunction with Migrant Children’s Foundation, who arranged for a day of activities at a local migrant children’s school. Our students paired up with migrant students to paint canvases to brighten up the bare walls of their classrooms and they also re-painted the walls of their playground into beautiful landscapes from the desert to the ocean and rainforest. The artistic result of their cooperation was fresh and imaginative and as importantly any cultural barriers between the students were truly torn down.
