All kinds of pictures had to be taken!

This semester I have been working with the 5th year like last year. I only had one semester with this group, a great group! My only wish would be to have more girls. In this group there are 15 boys and 1 girl.

This time I tought the course ‘edição electronica’ and photography. There are talented students in this group and there where some nice projects.

Thanks for the cooperation all of you and I wish you all the best and a great future!

The final students in graphic design in ENAV will defend their work on 23rd of July, in less than two weeks. There are still many things to do but the work is taking a shape!

This is the group I have been working with since I came here and I was their supervisory teacher last year. Since Christmas they have been working as interns in design agencies in Maputo but coming to school on monday and friday afternoons to work on their final projects. Most of the students finished their three months of internship in May/June and some of them have already made a contract to continue to work there as graphic designers.

In the end of the semester last christmas we had meetings about the final projects, about ideas and what to do. Some of them presented ambitious ideas and they all had ideas that could be developed into a final project.

In the period they are interns they have 8 hours a week in the schools schedule to come and work on their final projects. It has been a bit challenging to get the students to come to school that period. When working in the graphic agencies they have projects there and it can be difficult to leave that and go to school, and as many of us graphic designers know, they think they have a lot of time until suddenly the end is close! But most of them though have attended school, some more some less, and used their time and access to the graphic studio in school to develop their work.

These eight hours a week are not enough to finish the projects. But next semester the finalists are not part of the plan in school and they do not have access to the media lab, as it is fully booked for classes with 4th and 5th year. There is also no teacher to attend them. Next semester my colleague Paulo, which is here on behalf of Identidades (a portuguese project) will have to teach most of the classes as I will go in August. Last years final students had their presentation as late as October and it was quite caotic because they did not have access to the media lab and had great difficulties in succeeding to finish their work.

The school has a month long winter vacation from the 19th of june and then the graphic room/media lab is free. I decided to stay there from 9-17 in the vacation period working with the final students to give them opportunity to work hard to finish their projects and then have the ‘defesa’/final presentation right after the school starts so they can finish and graduate.

My work period here ended in June and there was not a will to continue my contract for one month to finish this work. I was sad about leaving without finishing the work so I talked to the leaders in school about the possibility of staying anyway. They appreciated that and agreed it was important I finished off this work. So I bought me a new ticket home in august and was so lucky to be able to stay in a very nice friends house here in Maputo.

The work is going well and the spirit is up and the students are ambitious. I really am enjoying working with them. I will post the results after the ‘defesa’.

One of my students designed a logo for his church in one of the projects this semester. Now he finished the logo and asked me to come along to his church to present and give away the logo.

So last Sunday I went there and met his youth group. Very nice group of young people. Begildo presented the logo and the visual identity manual in a slide show. Then the group discussed and brought up questions. Why this color? Why are there three smiling faces? How to use the logo on a red t-shirt… Begildo had most of the answers ready. The group were happy and grateful to have  the logo. The priest came after the presentation so he got an extra short presentation and held a little speech.

I think Begildo did a nice job. He manages to use the main letters SA, Sociedade de Alegria (society of joy) in a happy and joyful way. Blue is the color of heaven and the three faces are a symbol of a society/group of people.

Then I went to Begildos home to visit his family. There I was served a nice lunch and Begildo showed me nice artwork he is doing at home.

One of the difficult things of moving from Oslo to Maputo was changing the ‘garbage habits’… In Oslo we separated all our garbage and took to recycling station close by. We even had a separate bin for paper in front of our building. Separating and recycling garbage also effected our consumption. Separating the garbage makes one more aware of the amount of it and when it takes an effort to throw you also think about buying less and collecting less garbage. Our criteria for selecting products were among other things, if it could be recycled and the less packaging the better. We had the policy of leaving the packaging garbage in the store, only taking the product itself home (hoping the store would push the producer to reduce packaging).

It is great that this option is now available in Maputo. AMOR; Associação MOcambicana de Reciclagem has opened three recycling stations. First task is to organize more garbage bins at home and get the trip to the recycling station into the busy everyday life! I will start today. Lets all do that!

Here below is the announcement from AMOR and a map of the location:
Caros residentes de Maputo,

A Associação Moçambicana de Reciclagem (AMOR) vem por este meio informar da abertura de tres “eco-pontos” na cidade onde podem deixar o vosso lixo seleccionado em sacos (de segunda a sexta das 8h as 16h). A AMOR recolha todos resíduos como papeis, papelão, plásticos, latas, garrafas de vidro e e-waste.
Os resíduos serão pago por kilo consoante o tipo de produto. Em breve, sera organizado uma recolha gratuita dos seus recicláveis nos perímetros dos “eco-pontos”. Os “eco-pontos” sao contentores verde nas zonas de Coop, Museu e Baixa.

————————————-
Dear Maputo residents,

The Mozambican Recycling Association (AMOR) is please to inform you the opening of three “eco-points” in the city where you can deposit your selected waste in bags (monday to friday from 8am to 4pm). The AMOR collects all residues like paper, cardboard, plastic, cans, glass bottles and e-waste.
All waste will be paid per kilo regarding its category. Shortly, we will put in place a free collection within the perimeter of the “eco-points”. The “eco-points” are green container in the areas of Coop, Museu and Baixa.
—————
A.MO.R. (Associação MOcambicana de Reciclagem).
Contactos:
Stephane Temperman; Presidente, +258 84 46 177 64.
Antoine Bossel; Vice-presidente, + 258 82 30 399 11
6865, Julius Nyerere, Hulene, Maputo, Moçambique.
—————
More details:

Prices for material delivered to the “eco-point”:

paper categories:
white paper = 0.75 Mt per kg
other paper (newsprint, magazine, dead-archives) = 0.3 Mt per kg
Must be packed in bags.

Cans:
oil cans, drinking cans, sprays, food cans, paint cans = 0.75 Mt per kg
Must be packed in bags.

Plastics:
Plastic bottles, buckets, plastic bags, chairs, soap bottle, … = 1.2 Mt per kg
plastics must be free of fiber, and packed in bags.

Cardboard:
Any kind of cardboard = 0.3 Mt per kg
must be stacked in bales

Maria saw Rejão´s illustration here below (Chorando pela Futura) on Facebook. She liked the style and contacted Rejão to ask him to illustrate there. It is an exiting project for Rejão and it looks like it will be a really nice peace of art.

Here is Dori´s blog about our visit to Dansarte.

When it was clear we would go to Mozambique to teach design, many of our friends, designers and artists, wanted to contribute by coming and having workshops or participate in some way. It is of course expensive and a long journey so it easier to say than do. Gilles & Cecilie said would come and they came!

They arrived 14th of May and stayed until the 26th. It has been great, they have made a beautiful painting in Dansarte, an art venue that is being built in Matola by Maria Helena. Me and Dori were in the ‘painting crew’ and helped out with the fillings, which was quite a nice change from the everyday computer and city work.

The first plan was that they would do a workshop with my students in ENAV but then we decided that their experience would fit perfectly to the Mural (wall painting) project that was on in ISAC. They have been doing wall paintings all over the world for many years and have an experience that could have been interesting for the students in ISAC. Mozambique has a tradition of wall painting and it looked promising to see the outcome of this mixture. The plan was to paint four walls, three by student groups and one by Gilles & Cecilie.

Unfortunately some thing went wrong with formalities so their participation in ISAC was cancelled. Instead they made a great wall painting in Dansarte in Matola. We had gone there to visit Rejão, my student, that is doing a wall painting on the recidence house there. From Wednesday until the last day Gilles & Cecilie went there with Dori to paint and I went along when I was not teaching.

The people there are great and the fantastic restaurant Tubiakanga is very close. There they have very nice chicken and pork, potatos and Preta! We really recommend everyone to visit Tubiakanga.

We went for the last day yesterday so they could finish off some last strokes and say goodbuy to Paulo the guard and the people working in Dansarte and of course have the last Preta in Tubiakanga.

Gilles & Cecilie, thank you for visiting Maputo!

Here is a link to Dori’s blog about the project.

Valdemar, one of the graduate students is a painter. His final project in the graphic design course in ENAV is doing identity for himself and the graphic design material for his exhibition. Dori and me went to his home to help him to photograph his artwork. He is looking for possibilities to make the exhibition a reality.

On the photos are some examples of his art and his workplace.

We had a nice dinner with Thore Anton Bredeveien, consultant in FK (Fredskorpset) and the FK participants here in Maputo. The FK participants in Maputo are Kristine, Tadzo (she was unfortunately sick) and me in the MONOZI project of Kulturskolen i Fredrikstad. Zeze and Kristina (also unfortunately sick) in a cooperation between KHiO (Oslo National Academy of the art) and the CNCD (The National Company of Dance in Mozambique). And Pal that is working for a norwegian engineer company, a bit different kind of FK project where the participants have normal salaries and facilities paid by the company but go through the FK system. We also had an FK visitor from Botswana working in the same project as Pal.

Thore also came for a visit to our balcony to have a meeting with Dori and Karina about a possible FK program between the new ISAC academy and KHiO his school in Oslo.

There is an extreme change of working situation in ENAV now. The school has moved to another building in Rua Bagamoyo, one of the oldest streets in Maputo. In the day the institutions and shops are open but in the night this is the sad street of prostitution.

For some of the departments the change is not good. The building is smaller than the former one and the working situations difficult. The design department is a lucky one. We have two big air conditioned rooms, one filled with computers for design work and the other with focus on film and animation. The change from teaching in a small and to warm room with four old mini-macs to a big room with 15 new imacs is enormous.

We, the teachers place emphasis on the fact that it is the creativity, design thinking, understanding of visual language and forms, composition and framing that will make a good design. But in the computer and internet age it is important to have access to computers and time to practice. Instead of being four students on each computer, fighting about the minutes each spends, each student has an open access to a computer when needed. Today I begun teaching web design. First task is to open a simple wordpress site.

Since coming home from the Sem Balança project we have been finishing off the project rapport (will post soon) and organizing the material. David´s final project in the graphic design course in ENAV is about Sem Balança and he has been working on the first draft of a documentary about it. Here is the result: Sem Balança documentary