Gender Equality : Not a Fantasy 

Between September 2019 and December 2019, we set off on another journey hand-in-hand with children, women, various talented artists and dedicated volunteers towards the enchanting world of fairy tales. During our 12-week long workshop series framed around the theme of gender equality, children were supported with several art fields, which foster their creativity, reinforce intellectual growth while ensuring a healthy emotional developmental process, again under the roof of ASAM (The Association for Solidarity Asylum Seekers and Migrants).

Throughout the whole semester, we tackled folk tales enriched by traditional norms as well as myths woven with masculine and feminine archetypes, firstly by ripping them apart, then examining, interpreting and building alternatives all over again. 

 

INCOMPLIT invites both children and grown-ups to question heteronormative stereotypes led by our mix&match book including children’s drawings whose profits will completely be donated to SGDD-ASAM.  

 

Our upcoming project will be organized with a group of committed volunteers as facilitators to emphasize the culture of active citizenship and encourage social engagement. Besides children ateliers, we are designing a gathering with their mothers, where women circle around within a safe environment to share their stories, evoke collective memories, produce, and grow together. Creating a climate of open dialogue among women, we aim to enhance a long-term positive impact on local communities and spread it through different mediums. 

Wilderness and Human Relationship: Rewild

For INCOMPLIT, creating artwork is a non-threatening venue that allows kids to tackle tough issues in a creative way. Thereupon it wanted to encourage children to practice different kinds of expressive arts which refer to any combination of dance, writing, visual arts, drama, music or other creative outlets. Taking these modalities and using them to enhance individual development and growth, it also wanted these to help them to explore the wider world with its both dark and bright sides. The right mix can improve overall well-being and contribute to lowering anxiety and stress, improving self-awareness and self-esteem, strengthening relationships, regulating behaviors and advancing social skills.

 

Between December 2018 and March 2019, INCOMPLIT has organized 12-week workshop program with Syrian and Turkish kids nurtured by ASAM ( The Association for Solidarity Asylum Seekers and Migrants). These workshops facilitated by various artists and instructors were built under the theme of 'Wilderness and Human Relationship'.

Aside, once more INCOMPLIT wanted to show the children that their imaginative projection along with their creative potential are worth to carry on ourselves as our signs of identification.

Inspiring from these 3 month long journey INCOMPLIT created Rewild, a collection to remind us that

 ‘ Wild is Wise.’

Life Below Water: Drop

We have organised 3 month long fairy tale completing workshop in collaboration with Turkish and Syrian refugee children which are under the same roof of Sgdd-ASAM between January 2018- April 2018.  But, this time our story was underwater, not on earth’s surface. Our eyes were in the underwater life, the diversity and beauty of the creatures. There were also those who did not belong to the water.  

In one of our workshops we were dancing choreographed by the actors of our fairy tale and the movements of the creatures in the depths of the ocean and in other workshop, we created a submarine chorus. But not only were octopuses, seahorses, sharks, but also broken glass, among the voices from the bottom, the rustling of a still nylon bag hanging with coral.

 

We drew all of these activities and visualized the water life of children's perception.

We share our belief in the exhibited and importance of resistance even for a drop while consuming the power of creating, separating and connecting the water with the Drop collection.

 

The Drop collection which inspired by the 3 months process and performed under the supervision of different disciplines and clinic psychology graduates from Bilgi University, consists of 100% cotton ecological fabrics, used nylon and plastic materials that we reinterpret through upcycling.

 

We will be able to contribute to the children’s school needs in 2018-2019 with purchases made from a collection of caftans, pareos, skirts, sweatshirts and clutches, as well as having a child go to the TURMEPA Marine Training camp with every purchase.

Quality Education: Magic

We have organised 2 month long fairy tale completing workshop in collaboration with Small Projects Istanbul.

We have red them The Little Lantern of Ghassan Kanafani. We have cut the story in the middle, to let them complete with their drawings. We have used the drawings as the embroideries of the side accessories of the incomplete designs.  

 

How did we choose the Little Lantern? About the book and about Ghassan Kanafani

Ghassan Kanafani is a Palestinian journalist, novelist, and short story writer. In 1948, when he was 12 years old he was forced to leave his homeland with his whole family and they became refugees. His niece Lamis and himself were assassinated by the same bomb that Saturday morning in Beirut in July 1972. Every year Ghassan would write and illustrate a book for Lamis on her birthday, and this one is one of them.  

We have chosen this book as we always want to underline the magical correlation between fairy tales, empathy, and creativity.  

Kids start to develop empathy by the time we share the story of the writer, Kanafani. That makes them realize how their paths cross and the potential they do have. 

 

Peace and Justice: Bond

Supported by United Nations International Office of Migration, the main purpose of INCOMPLIT for having these workshops in Gaziantep is to help the children to discover their imaginative projection along with their creative potential in the field of drawing and writing expressions in the long term (as we have the language barriers for the moment). In addition, by applying their drawings on the designs, INCOMPLIT wants to show how valuable their efforts are. 

In our opinion, witnessing the diversity of Turkish and Syrian children's drawings and seeing how they complete the same story would create new opportunities and new perceptions for the people who are actively working on the integration subject.

As we want to maintain the work model of the label with the drawings of the refugee kids in Gaziantep, we have come up with an additional idea during our meetings with the Innocampus team. This idea involves Turkish children living with refugee kids in Gaziantep.

While we motive the Syrian children to complete the stories by drawings, we did ask the Turkish children to complete the same stories by drawing and writing at the same time. This kind of a mutual work would be exemplary for the integration process which is the main objective of Innocampus for Gaziantep project.

 

INCOMPLIT X NoLabs

For NoLab Made in Türkiye exhibition, we decided to explore the skating culture which is spreading fast all around the world but has no foundation in Turkey, and the stories of children who can survive on the street only with a sense of belonging to this culture. 

Unfortunately as with everything subculture, in Turkey, we undermine the skating culture. Our concern and dream were to pay some respect to this culture.

The importance those skater kids attach to skateboarding was far greater than we could imagine before meeting and dreaming with them.

But, this time we haven't read them a story, we built the story with them.