All the Best

21–24/11/2016

17:30—20:30 h

Academy of Fine Arts (Zagreb)

workshop, 2016

The saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions can be applied when adults or a group of adults think that they know what is best for children and young people. They impose on others their own (inherited or acquired) limitations as the only possible framework for someone’s life plans. Adults like to control, dictate to, condemn people who think differently, prohibit, accuse and penalize. When a critical mass of people with the same limitations gathers in society, it becomes the socially desirable viewpoint, conduct or law. In the last half a year we have seen the dramas because of the wish to reduce the control of children and young people in the educational process, and because of the halting of the integral curricular reform. Shifting the focus to the pupils, their choices and the development of all their potentials do not suit those who have been accustomed to live in the framework of various controls, control of behavior for instance, of information, thinking and emotions. This project provides a kind of reprogramming of the life plans of adults in line with contemporary educational guidelines. This is one of the possible ways leading to the acceptance and understanding of something that perhaps is not in line with one’s own life plan.

It consists of four workshops for adults, each one of which deals with one of the basic controls that limit people and prevent them from developing without hindrance, with a broad view on life and the world: control of behavior, control of information, of thinking and the emotions. During the workshop the members will discover these forms of control in their own life patterns and plans and under the expert guidance of a gestalt psychologist will restructure them with various techniques into more flexible and open plans, focused on the development of basic life values such as identity, respect, responsibility, solidarity, integrity and so on, as well as basic competencies such as creative and critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, collaboration, communication, connectedness with others and active citizenship.

collaborator: Sandra Grubić

Sonja Vuk (HR)

Sonja Vuk graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, the Academy of Fine Arts and Art Education in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and did a post-graduate course at the same institution. She completed a master’s course in video and new media at the Academy of Art and Artistic Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is now completing a doctoral course in art education at the Educational Faculty in Ljubljana. She deals with video, social and educational projects, and takes part in numerous exhibitions and video festivals all around the world (for instance, White Columns, New York; International Museum of Women, San Francisco; Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland; Tallin Art Hall, Estonia; Arnolfini, Bristol, UK; Today Art Museum, Peking ).

She won the purchase prize of the University Library for drawing at the 21st Young Artists’ Salon and was awarded at the 9th Sculpture Triennial, Zagreb. Her works are found in collections of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Dunaujvaros, Hungary; the International Museum of Women, San Francisco; the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka.

sonja.vuk@gmail.com