When we were in Germany we ran a workshop first that was making bunting to decorate our village, the circle of tents we shared with Highgate and Holloway Woodcraft Folk, the Austrian Rote Falkens and the Catalan Esplai. The Austrians built a tall wooden gateway as the entrance to the village, painted with the colours and symbols of all the group: a red falcon, a yellow and black bumblebee and two green trees in front of a red and yellow sunrise (or sunset, depending on interpretation.) We sat round in the afternoon under the trees for shade as it was hot, and slept off the long journey, and sewed bunting as our contribution to the village decoration.
The other workshop was in the central area, where every day there were lots of workshops organised around themes. We started on the morning of ‘Peace’ day, making willow structures in the shapes of doves, butterflies, a boat and teardrop and pyramid shapes. In the afternoon we hung them up, and participants came and helped cover the structures in glued wet-strength tissue paper. Although some spoke no English and did not know what we were doing, they could see fairly easily, and we handed them pieces of glued paper which they layered on. Then we all got sponges and smoothed down all the loose edges.
Later when they were dry we cut the holes, put lights inside, wrote messages on the outside. We walked around the camp in the dark so everyone could see the end results. The message of peace was one that people on the camp were happy to see, as friends from all over the world.
I think we could have given people more creative freedom in the workshop, and had a small group of different people learn the structure building in the morning before everyone came in the afternoon.
Also people could have helped with the messages, making it more of a shared community experience which was the point of the camp. We should have relinquished more personal creative control to the collective ad been less precious with the materials.