The Cultural Day of Russia and painting in Kassebølle Friskole
“Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity. Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.”
-Robert Alan Aurthur, an American screenwriter, film director, and film producer.
About me
My name is Alyona Lyzhova, I’m 26 years old, I´m from Russia and I’m volunteering in Kassebølle Friskole on an island called Langeland. The project is situated in the countryside so the life here it´s very different from the life in a city. It was a very interesting experience to learn about the Danish culture being in the heart of it, where the people are, of course, more traditional in a way than in big cities where the traditions and cultures are mixing due to people coming from abroad and interacting with each other.
I liked the idea to come to volunteer in this school because the system of education here is rather different than all the systems I know, it doesn´t depend on the government and teachers are free to choose their own way of teaching kids and that gives them the opportunity to feel free trying many different things in handcrafts and also expressing freely their own opinion. I thought that it would be nice to jump into this and be part of it for a while.
While working here I decided that I can have more than one Solidarity project because I was really enjoying the process and interacting with the kids from the school and the teachers
My First Solidarity Project:The Cultural Day of Russia in Kassebølle Friskole
Speaking a little bit with my mentor in the school I decided that I wanted to make a project about my country’s culture. Due to the things happening now in the world people started changing their opinion about Russia or the young generations abroad learning only negative things because of the media and etc.. I just wanted to share with people in the school that my country is not only about politics, that it also has a great culture and traditions that many people don’t know and that Russia is deeper than all those negative bad things. I hope that they learnt many interesting things about my culture and will spread that knowledge to other people.
The idea was that the whole day was devoted to the cultural day and the teachers were having classes on their own topics. I made the plan for the day and my colleagues helped me with it.
So each teacher was having the class on a particular subject. For example, the 1-2 and 4th grades had geography.
1-2, 4-5th grades – Geography
The kids were supposed to find the main cities of Russia on the map and glue their names on it.
2nd grade -Art(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tkOJu2-BjYN_uW0aW0o6HF0eOj9RABhN/view?usp=drivesdk
Learning about different types of Christian Orthodox churches and painting them with watercolour
I will leave here a link to the video so you can see what the kids painted:)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tkOJu2-BjYN_uW0aW0o6HF0eOj9RABhN/view?usp=drivesdk
6-7th grades – Art and cooking
Here they were learning about Khokhloma( is a style of Russian art traditionally painted on wooden household items) and baking plyushka( russian buns)
0 grade – Matryoshka and bliny
Here we were learning what is “matryoshka” and baking “bliny” (russian pancakes).
Interesting fact: Danes do know what is matryoshka and some even have it at home just that they call it in a different way-babúshka:)And I guess that word came from USA where they call babushka a headscarf. In Russian bábushka means grandmother, so I guess there is some logic in all this naming.
To be honest, I didn´t expect that everyone would be so involved but they were. It was really an amazing day that made me very happy because the school gave me the opportunity to share my culture with them, which I love very much, and at the end everyone liked it so I´m very proud of this solidarity project! And, of course, I want to thank my colleagues from the school for helping me with that idea! Without them I wouldn´t have the chance to accomplish that!
Also, because it was a success, the headmaster of the school decided to make the cultural day every year, so it became a tradition for Kassebølle Friskole!
My Second Solidarity Project: Painting Klimt’s picture with the kids
So usually we have only one Solidarity Project to make and almost in the beginning I’ve made my mind with making the Russian cultural day. But, once going to a bar with one of my colleagues he saw my drawings and he liked one of them- it was the copy made in my way of Klimt’s picture “The Three Ages of Woman“
The first one is Klimt’s picture (part of it) and the second one is mine.
Anyways, he suggested the idea to draw that picture for the school because it also symbolises the love of the mother and the child and Kassebølle is a very family oriented place so of course the headmaster loved that idea.
At the end, we decided to make it real and I asked the kids of the school to help me in this project and they gladly did.
One of my colleagues prepared the wooden plate for me to paint on, which was very nice of him.
So we started with sketching first. I drew the main picture and the girls ( from 0-2 grades) drew the flowers.
Little by little we were making it into something and finally we created this picture. To leave our mark on the picture we decided to sign it so you can see our names on the dress of the mother.
The kids were doing that usually after classes, during fritter time( it’s the time after classes where the kids can do creative things, play, read and so on until they are picked by their parents).
Everyday they were asking me if we are painting the picture or not so they were very excited about taking part in that.
We presented the picture on the school’s festival so you can see it in the video here https://drive.google.com/file/d/13InNzshE5ipooldN4_bjYlei0q9sc042/view?usp=drivesdk
The picture is in the concert hall now where the school gathers every morning to sing so everyone can see it and I’m very happy that we could spend time like this with the kids and also made such a great work. Also very glad that I left to the school a little piece of me so every time looking at it they could remember me:)
ESC Solidarity Projects 