KIDS, WAR and ART
G'day guys,
Welcome to the world of Samantha Robison, founder of AptART. Samantha gives kids in Syrian refugee camps a chance at childhood through art.
In Zaatari, Jordan -- Young Syrian children,
refugees of their country's grinding civil war, playfully grab paint brushes
and rollers nearly as big as they are in this windswept desert camp, adding
splashes of bright color to their bleak surroundings.
Most
of the trailers and tents match the beige color of the swirling sand
surrounding the Zaatari refugee camp, home to about 120,000 Syrians who fled
the nearly three-year war still gripping the nation. Slowly though, that's
changing with the help of a U.S. artist who is leading children haunted by the
conflict to paint buildings and walls at the crowded camp with murals
expressing their lives and hopes.
"So
many children are bored in Zaatari. They just throw rocks because they have
nothing else to do," artist Samantha Robison said. "There's a lot of
violent tendencies and negative energy, so if you bring in art and give them a
positive activity, it helps a lot."
The
painting project gives a moment of color and self-expression for kids who have
had their lives shattered by Syria's war. Last week, the special U.N. envoy for
children and conflict warned about the effects of the upheaval on children,
warning that Syria's violence is producing a generation plagued with illiteracy
and "filled with hate."
Just
over half the refugees in Zaatari are under the age of 18. On what was once an
empty patch of desert, the sprawling complex has grown in just a year into the
second largest refugee camp in the world and is Jordan's fifth largest
populated city, with more refugees pouring daily across the border, just 16
kilometers (10 miles) away. Many of the families come from the southern Syrian
province of Daraa, where the Syrian uprising began, and many of the children
have directly experienced the trauma of having their neighborhoods bombarded
and having relatives killed.
Robison,
27, from the Washington, D.C.-area, works in the camp as part of an
organization she founded called AptART. She has traveled to Cambodia, Congo,
Iraq and Syria to work on art projects before arriving at Zaatari.
Under
Robison's watch, children have already painted a number of structures. A
one-time white trailer serving as a pediatric clinic now sports a bright blue
facade, with cartoon images of doctors, children and parents appearing in bold
orange, turquoise and red tones. Big Arabic calligraphy appears throughout,
offering the adage: "Prevention is better than cure."
In
another part of the camp, a giant purple tree spreads its branches over the
length of a wall at one of Zaatari's schools. Among the branches, refugee
children painted a plane, an easel, and other symbols – objects representing
jobs they hope to have when they grow up.
As
South African artist Luc Van Der Walt, one of those working with Robison,
poured out the paint into large canisters to mix, the children – from as young
as 5 years old to their early teens – crowded around, anxious to dip their
brushes. Tiny girls squealed as they dashed to the nearby wall to dab it with
flashes of bright yellow. "Slow down, slow down," Syrian volunteers
repeatedly told the excited children, trying to get them to take turns at the
paint bucket.
A
12-year-old girl who gave her name as Habeer sang while she and the kids
painted a mural. "I am happy when I am painting," she said. "I
try to draw a lot at school. The best things I like to draw are trees, birds
and flowers. I want to be a teacher when I grow up."
Robison,
who works with South African artist Luc Van Der Walt, said the artwork helps
children take a sense of ownership in the crowded refugee camp, where some have
dismantled structures for their own use. Particularly hard hit are communal
bathrooms, as refugees take apart the bricks and piping to construct their own
private showers and toilets, aid workers say.
"We
allow children to write on a wall. We turn writing on a wall into a positive
thing," Robison said. "What child hasn't written their name or
something and was scolded? We're having a little bit of fun with it and getting
the kids involved."
Robison
stops children from painting the black, white and green tricolor flag of
Syria's opposition, trying to keep politics out of the work. She and Van Der
Walt also stop children from copying cartoon characters from television, though
they encourage any other artistic endeavor.
Around
600 children in the camp have participated in the program so far, as the artist
team moves from section to section of the camp, Robison said. The kids lay down
a base coat and then add their pictures, then Robison and her colleagues
incorporate it into a larger mural. Often the murals have a public service
message, like to beware of germs or to avoid wasting water.
Children
laugh and sing as they paint. Some plant paint handprints on the walls. Rawan,
a 10-year-old, was helping give a bathroom wall a bright coat of yellow paint.
"I've
painted many buildings in Zaatari," she said. "I like painting and
putting designs on everything, including trailers and now this washroom."
Robin
Nataf, part of another aid group called ACTED, said the art helped bring
refugees together.
"As
soon as AptART take out the paint, children, elders, even imams and
schoolteachers turn out. Everybody is happy to see some fun happening and the
children getting involved," Nataf said.
"These
people have to live here and we don't know for how long. It's important they
make it as nice as possible."
Clancy's comment: Well done, Samantha. Anything that helps kids to enjoy a real childhood has got to be a positive - especially kids caught in a war zone.
I'm ...
Yep, kids like these should be painting, not scrounging through
a rubbish dump to earn a living.
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