Collaboration with the Luxembourg School of Contemporary Art on a practical project for students: decorating our insect hotels. A great success!
Video Recap:
A Collaborative Project with a Contest
Our insect hotels appeal to local biodiversity. While very natural and functionally perfect, their backs were rather unattractive, even a little dull.
So, we proposed a project to the School of Contemporary Art: asking students to decorate the back of our insect hotels. The director, Mr. Tosello, was immediately captivated by the idea and organized a contest among classes of all ages.
The children responded enthusiastically, and we received over a dozen proposals from young artists aged between 6 and 16. Our team selected the two winners: Théodore, 8, and Claudia, 15.
“Théodore was really surprised to be selected,” Mr. Tosello told us. “He gained confidence thanks to this selection.”
The Workshop: A Productive Saturday Morning!
As it was already cold, we opted to have the children work on wooden panels, warmly inside our meeting room, rather than having them paint outside. A much more comfortable and simpler solution to implement.
Mr. Tosello took care to choose paints without solvents or other chemical components that would have scared away the insects, and our young artists were able to reproduce their designs on the wooden panels.
“It’s much better to paint big, but it’s harder!” Théodore.
While Théodore discovered the joys of “real work,” as he called it, Claudia was already worried about not being able to finish everything. To her defense, it’s true that her design was very detailed.
“3 hours is far too short to do all the details!” Claudia.
Everything went well: Claudia was able to finish her artwork in the following days, and both left with some sweet treats as souvenirs.
Now, We Enjoy Their Creations
After collecting the artworks, we were able to varnish them, again with a harmless product, which was not easy to source given the climatic conditions the paintings would have to face.
Finally installed last spring, we regularly enjoy passing by these original creations from our budding artists.
Why a Collaboration with EAC?
We could have called upon established artists, as was the case for decorating our lobbies and for the sculptures adorning our buildings, but the idea of offering these young people a small challenge, a concrete application for their work seemed more interesting and useful to us.
“This initiative fits perfectly with our CSR policy and helps us contribute a little to SDG 4: Education, which we don’t typically address in our core program,” states Marc Diver, CEO.
And the children’s satisfaction was genuine, so much so that we are considering repeating the experience, as there are plenty of creative possibilities!
A big thank you to all the children who participated in the contest, of course, to our two artists, and to Mr. Tosello, who dedicated his time and made this collaboration possible.