Celeste Booth and her team have been running the Blingalicious and Prehistoric Paint-making workshops as a part of SciFest Africa since 2011.
Celeste Booth and her team have been running the Blingalicious and Prehistoric Paint-making workshops as a part of SciFest Africa since 2011.
The workshops use authentic methods to recreate jewellery and prehistoric paintings such as those of the San artists.
Each workshop takes two hours and can have a class of up to 20 students, generally from Grade Six upwards. However, they also welcome younger children, if accompanied by an adult.
Blingalicious runs every day of the festival from 10am to 12pm during which time the class makes bracelets, necklaces or earrings in the same way that ancient civilisations might have done.
The team teaches children to cut open the leaves of the “Mother-in-Law’s Tongue” plant and use the strong strands as the string for the beads of their bracelets.
Other materials participants can use are the shells from ostrich eggs, which they put holes in themselves using stone artefacts.
Ostrich eggshells can also be burned to create a more colourful effect.
The children also have the option of adding glass beads to their jewellery.
The Prehistoric Paint-making workshop runs from 2pm to 4pm. It supplies the children with a flat slab of rock and allows them to use their imagination to paint on them.
Painting materials include ochre in red, yellow and white.
The ochre is ground up while dry and then mixed with eggs or milk to make it adhere to the rock. The San people would use blood as this wet agent.
The ochre is mixed using shells or hollowed out animal horns and this ‘paint’ is applied to the rock using either fingers or makeshift paintbrushes made of feathers or sticks.
Scroll down for a gallery of beautiful pictures.
