Legendary Powerlifting
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
"According to legend, the Cieszyn Land was conceived in a peculiar way. Because when God decided to create it, he did not say a word, but smiled and that divine smile was to arise ..." - Gustaw Morcinek.
The project "Legendarny Trójbój" and its results ("Legendary powerlifting") were established in an equally peculiar way - it was a series of workshops that had one thing in common - legends and tales related to Cieszyn Silesia based on books of Gustaw Morcinek and Józef Ondrusz.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
The project consisted in organizing a series of workshops, the participants of which - children aged 6 to 12, created an animated film (time-lapse method), comic book and board game based on the legends of Cieszyn Silesia, which exist in the collective consciousness of the region's inhabitants, inter alia: "About the Black Princess", "About Ondraszek", "About the foundation of Cieszyn", "About Utopcu", "About Cieszyniance Wiosennej", and others that can be found in the source materials (which we used in the project) - books by Gustaw Morcinek (https : //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaw_Morcinek) and Józef Ondrusz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Ondrusz).
The workshops lasted: 5 days (board game workshops), 6 days (comics workshops) and 7 days (animated film workshops) and were conducted by real specialists - Sylwia Dwornicka (filmmaker, photographer, painter) and Pawel Siemek (graphic designer, board game creator).
These areas have a lot in common and are based on similar structures. For each of them, the participants of each workshop created a scenario that contained a description of the action, place, time and character. Based on the scenario, a detailed storyboard will be created. Thus, these two main tasks and the Cieszyn legends were the link between the three workshops. Learning through play gave the project participants the opportunity to learn: planning, composing, building and narrating as well as the drama of a story. In the technical implementation of the task, participants will become sensitive to artistic values; composition, spatial thinking, color combination, lighting and contrast.
Children and youth people learned how to work in a team and how to divide duties using individual predispositions. They get to know the legends of the city and learn how to build a plot of an animated film, comic book and a board game on this basis. The workshops also satisfied the need for creativity, expression and navigating the world.
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Key objectives for sustainability
The goals of the project that we have achieved are permanent, because we shared the effects of the task with a wider group of interest, which has resulted in the fact that the effects of our project are recognizable among customers and the supra-local community. Each of the students of the task (direct) received a post-workshop set - an animated film from "Legend about Ondraszek" on DVD, a comic book with five legends related to Cieszyn Silesia, a board game and a board game "Legends of Cieszyn". We also distributed such sets to additional indirect ones - to many local government units: City Hall in Cieszyn, Poviat Starosty of Cieszyn County, Marshal's Office of the Silesian Voivodeship, Regional Cultural Center in Bielsko-Biała, as well as institutions and organizations of Cieszyn Silesia: the City Library in Cieszyn , Książnica Cieszyńska, the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia (whose branches include the Museum of Gustaw Morcinek in Skoczów), Zamek Cieszyn, the Cieszyn Cultural Center "Dom Narodowy", Macierz Ziemia Cieszyńskiej (Society of the Enthusiasts of the Region), University of the Third Age of Wzyna, Association for Development and Regional Cooperation "Olza", the Orphanage in Cieszyn, the Three Brothers Board Games Association from Cieszyn.
Board games, comics and animated films belong to the world of pictorial culture, which finds many friendly audiences among children and young people - our target group. Regardless of the passing time and the generational change, these forms of conveying content will still enjoy unflagging interest. For this reason, the effects of our workshops should be remembered not only by the participants, but also by future recipients (the animated film "Legenda o Ondraszku" was published on the Internet, and the board game "Legendy Cieszyńskie" will have its second edition and will be released in a larger circulation) .
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
We made sure that the people who conducted the workshops beat real specialists in the topic of the workshops.
The animated film and comic book workshops were conducted by Sylwia Dwornicka - filmmaker, photographer, painter, amateur theater actress, computer graphic artist, animated film and art instructor, culture animator. Participant of individual and collective photographic and painting exhibitions. She graduated from the State Higher School of Film, Television and Theater in Łódź
in the field of photography.
Board games workshops were conducted by Paweł Siemiek - a computer graphic artist, creator of board games, card games and turn-based games. Co-founder of the Cieszyn Association of Games Planszwych Three Brothers. A graduate of the graphics department at the Faculty of Art of the University of Silesia. Culture animator organizing board games for children and teenagers.
We have devoted a lot of time to ensure a high level of aesthetics and quality of comics, animated films and board games. The comic book "Legends of Cieszyn Silesia" was printed in color, in B5 format, on chalky paper, the animated film "Legenda o Ondraszek" received a setting worthy of a professional film on DVD (with an aesthetic cover, a context menu appropriate to the character of this particular film, including information about the authors of the film and links to individual scenes of the film), the board game "Legendy Cieszyńskie" includes, among others 45 legend cards with unique and original illustrations by Paweł Siemek, wooden and colorful pins for the game, professionally "cut" and made playing cards (there are 105 of them in the game in total).
Key objectives for inclusion
We invited to workshops children and young people from 6 to 12 years of age to participate in the workshops. During the workshops, they had a lot of freedom to reveal their unrestrained expression and creatively influence the overall shape of the workshop work. Working on a comic book, animated film and a board game gave them a lot of joy and fun, but also required teamwork - which favored the integration of the group - when developing, among others the scenario or when refining the details of individual elements of the workshop. Our goal was to include children and young people from various backgrounds in our project. We invited three girls from Orphange in Cieszyn to participate in the workshop. From the conversations with their tutor and the director of the orphanage, it turned out that the workshops gave them a lot of joy and the opportunity to spend time outside the orphanage.
Workshops as a party during the Coid-19 pandemic. Fortunately, we did not have to limit them in terms of number or duration. We managed to provide appropriate conditions for all workshop participants.
Key objectives of the project were in line with the "Strategy for the development of culture in the Śląskie Voivodeship for the years 2006–2020". In terms of cultural competences, through a wide offer addressed to both young people and children, it shapes the attitudes of active and creative participation in culture (direction 1.1.). On the other hand, the workshops conducted in a universal and popular formula follow the Strategy 1.3 direction.
Results in relation to category
The work of Józef Ondrusz is marked by his love of folklore, which he brought from his family home thanks to his mother and grandmother. He has permanently entered the canon of obligatory reading with the extensive collections of local legends and legends "Godki śląskie" and "Miraculous bread". He was an extremely valued educator. He has developed a total of 16 school textbooks. To this day, his work popularizes the folk culture of Cieszyn Silesia among children and youth.
The world of Gustaw Morcinek's fairy tales is the former Cieszyn Silesia, a magical land where idols, drowners, and nunts live, and underground, in the mine, the Treasurer rules. Cheerful, brave and imaginative people live here, such as the miner Bulandra, Karlik Kowalczyk or the soldier Zeflik, who can overcome all evil and cheat on the devil himself. The author tells about the history of these fairy-tale characters, using juicy, colorful, humorous and witty, sometimes even coarse language.
These two authors contributed to the popularization and consolidation of many themes of tales and folk tales from Cieszyn Silesia. Many of these legends - apart from fantastic threads (and thus interesting for young buyers) - carry educational and pedagogical content, and often also contain an accessible moral. My workshop support project, we tried to gain knowledge about these contents among children and adolescents, enabling them to become acquainted with them in an accessible way - through learning through play. Both a comic book and an animated film or a board game are means of expression that are popular with children and adolescents. They also give them an alternative to spending time in front of the TV or gaming console.
Anyone who received the effect of the workshop (game, comic book and film) could read the following information: "If you liked the fragments of stories and legends that we used to create the project, then refer to the sources: (...)" - list of sources.
How Citizens benefit
Participants of the animated film workshop learned about selected legends of Cieszyn Silesia, received tips on how to make an animated film, then wrote the film's script: a description of the action, characters, place, time and dialogues. Subsequently prepared the script on the boards, lack of participation in the work on the film set in sound and sound design. Subsequently, the possibility of viewing the purchase of blood necessary for film production: editing of the film image, mastering of sound material, editing of sound and film material. Comic book workshop participants took part in its creation by: writing a script based on legends and tales connected with Cieszyn Silesia, they prepared graphically individual pages of the comic, provided the illustrative part with text. Then, the workshop participants were informed about further work on the comic - its printing, composition. Participants of a board game workshops: learned about the operation of the game (mechanics), the proposed topics and made a sketch of the basic elements based on legends and tales related to Cieszyn Silesia. Then, children and teenagers developed a prototype of the game, which made it possible to show how it works in the preliminary version and to test the "playability" and mechanics of the game. This enabled them to introduce the necessary modifications and improvements, resulting in refining the basic mechanisms, details and developing high-quality gameplay.
The next phase was to select the character legends and artifacts from those legends that will be used in the game. On this basis, the graphic design of the necessary elements was created.
Each participant, after the end of the workshop and post-production of the game, film and comic book, received one copy of each of them. We released 50 DVDs with an animated film, 50 copies of board games and 50 copies of a comic book. They were distributed to institutions and offices from Cieszyn, Cieszyn Poviat and Silesian Voivodeship.
Innovative character
Each of the entities that provided us with a subsidy for the implementation of this project (Municipal Office in Cieszyn, Poviat Starosty in Cieszyn, Marshal's Office of the Silesian Voivodeship) repeated that this is an extraordinary and unusual project. Additionally, the same subjects were very satisfied with the achieved physical effects of the task, with the quality of professionalism in comics, animated films and board games.
Innovation is included in each of the final effects of the workshop: the comic book "Legendy Śląska Cieszyńskiego", the animated film "Legenda o Ondraszku" and the board game "Legends of Cieszyn" were the first adaptation of this type of legends and tales of Cieszyn Silesia.
Additionally, in the board game "Legendy Cieszyńskie", a unique game mechanics was used, which was developed by children and young people participating in the workshops, using the extensive experience of the workshop leader (Pawel Siemek).
