Pre – Trip: I am looking forward to the Street Art Workshop because it’s something I’ve never done before. Berlin is very famous for street art so I’m also really excited to walk around and see all the different styles and types of graffiti around the city. However, I do think that it will be a bit of a challenge for me because I’m not a very artistic person. Therefore it’s a bit out of my comfort zone. I hope that through the workshop I can learn some techniques and make something nice that I am happy with.
Post – Trip: I really enjoyed the graffiti workshop much more than I expected to. It was definitely something that I had never done before, so I felt like there was a lot of opportunity for growth. As I mentioned in my pre-trip reflection, I am not naturally a very creative person and am generally not very good at making art through drawing, painting etc. so going into this experience I did not have high expectations for the results.
Through the experience, I feel like I connected the most with Learning Outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process. Obviously, through the worksheet, I developed technical skills needed for graffiti, such as the distance between the paint bottle and the wall, as well as techniques such as fading colours and cutting, and overcame the challenges associated with learning those techniques.
However, the main challenge that I feel I overcame through this experience is the feeling that I have to be perfect at something in order for it to be a valuable experience. I normally avoid creative activities because I assume that I won’t be good at them and in turn assume that I won’t enjoy them. With graffiti, there is a lot of room for mistakes because even if you draw a line wrong or use the wrong colour, it is easily fixable. For me, this took the pressure off of focusing on the result, but instead focus on enjoying the process. I feel that this mindset can be applicable to many other aspects of my life and can be helpful when trying new things and therefore I think it’s a very valuable skill that I gained from participating in this workshop.
