Creative mela is an event where there are different spaces to explore different types of Art. Even though I am not studying further in arts, I do have a passion for arts which I would like to get in touch with from time to time. Hence, volunteering in creative mela was an output for me and also I wanted to take this as an opportunity to teach others about the skills of art and different types of art. I volunteered at the Dot Mandala art workshop which was held from grade 7 to 9.

LO 1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

As I worked with many students, I got to know that I was good at managing crowds and giving them instructions. I was able to effectively instruct them about all the steps and could help them improve on their weaknesses and also tell them where they were excelling and where they could improve. Also I worked well with my partner volunteers as we both strived to make the workshop a success. We were vigilant about how the resources were being used and were always available when we were short of things such as boards, pencils and always provided them to the participants. As I know this about myself now, I know that I can work well with groups and can manage them. I can apply these skills in my future career and extracurriculars. A weakness in the workshop that I noticed was that we had a hard time teaching the younger kids how to use the dotting tool effectively without messing up the work and make perfect dots because their hands were unstable but we solved this problem by making practice papers for them, we made templates for them so they could practice on them and gradually increased the difficulty level by going from large dots to small dots to dots with design which also gave them confidence and us a sense of accomplishment.

LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

I had done dot mandala before but when I was younger, there were some things that had slipped my mind when I was handling the workshop. When I did dot mandala myself, I only had to manage my time and my needs although now that I was conducting a workshop I had to manage the works of around 10-15 kids and they only had a limited time to complete their works, which made the work a little stressful. We had to make sure that all the students who had signed up had come first so we could start the activity, which included taking attendance which also took time. Our goal was to end the workshop with each kid having 2 works at least. This could only be possible if me and my fellow volunteer divided our responsibilities equally. All the kids demanded different things such as different diameter of the dotting tool or different colors and more paletes which were not always available. Hence, me and my partner decided that she would sit with the kids and make them do all the activities, where I would manage all the different resources and give instructions for the activities which made the work much more effective.

LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working collaboratively was one the main reasons that this workshop was a success and all the participants worked engagingly in the activities. I realized that we worked well as a pair and one of the reasons for this was that we were both good in arts and were looking for an outlet for all our creativity because of the busy schedules. This made us quite enthusiastic for the activity as we were also ready to dive into all the creativity and making artworks. Working collaboratively made the workshop easier for both of us because after the workshop we realized that we definitely would not be able to do this individually. Additionally, there were many students who had different amounts of skills and interest in them to do the activity, some came just to explore the activity, while some were habituated with it and were quite skilled in it. There were many instances where one kid was over with three pieces but another kid had just finished with one piece. This also built a complex in them that they were not doing well enough in it which we made sure to dissolve because we knew that everybody had different abilities. Working collaboratively also helped us to give adequate attention to all the children so that no one felt left out of the workshop which is a very important part of a workshop.

To conclude, this workshop taught me many skills and also I learned about the different skills that were in me which I was not aware about, not only this but I also learned resource and time management skills which are important for future team working assignments also.