Through the Guidance and Support Centre COA, with funding from InteRed, TA is making its presence felt in the culture and civil society of Holguín (Cuba).
The COA promotes small projects that encourage the growth of individuals and groups. An example of this was the participation, on 5 July, of the members of the COA Guitar Workshop as special guests at the “El Planeta de los Locos” club, hosted by Lay Verdecia, a musician and composer who graduated as an Art Instructor and teaches at the COA guitar workshop.
El Planeta de los Locos promotes culture and involves young writers, poets, storytellers and musicians of various genres, providing a stage where they can showcase their work and the best of their artistic endeavours.
For Verdecia, it is a space ‘conducive to meeting people and enjoying good music by artists, with the aim of instilling a refined aesthetic taste in young people’.
The COA guitar workshop participants performed the song ‘Lo esencial’, written by Verdecia himself. ‘These young people from different backgrounds and cultural levels come together,’ says Verdecia, ‘on the same stage, consolidating what they have learned and developing social relationships as well as their skills on the instrument.’ He adds that the performance showed that artistic education builds the human person and cultivates the spirit.
The director of COA, Dr. Nersa Grass, explains that when the guitar workshop began, ‘most of them had very basic knowledge and have grown in skills and as a group.’ One of these young people has mental difficulties and another has dyslalia as a result of hypoxia during childbirth’, she explains. Professor Verdecia says that until now he had not witnessed such growth in a group. ‘For us, it is a joy and a source of pride,’ says Grass.
Women artisans
The COA receives funding from the development NGO InteRed. It also strives to participate in international meetings, such as the ‘International Colloquium: For the Well-being of the Population: Science in Action,’ where COA psychologist Miosotis Odisa Hidalgo Font presented the topic: ‘Psychoeducational Workshops Given by Women Artisans,’ based on the experience of workshops with artisans in Holguín. This online colloquium was organised by the Ibero-American Network for Physical Education and Sport, together with the Joseph Canaan College in the Dominican Republic.
In a summary of their presentation at the colloquium, Odisa Hidalgo and the director of COA describe how this activity is carried out:
‘The artisans' meetings are enriched with psychoeducational training workshops to promote health activities at the individual and group levels.’ The experience involves women weavers from two locations: the city centre and Pueblo Nuevo, ‘a peripheral neighbourhood with complex socio-demographic characteristics,’ they point out.
The programme is held once a month with groups of no more than 12 women each, with an average age of 60. Some of the participants suffer from chronic illnesses. They are supported by psychology and medical professionals. They have ‘a psychoeducational purpose based on science, but with colloquial language,’ says Dr. Grass.
Topics such as physical and mental self-care, the influence of the mind on the immune system, family and teamwork are covered, along with practical tools. As a result, the report indicates that ‘the participants express satisfaction with the dynamic and participatory nature of the workshops, and also recognise that incorporating this knowledge into their daily lives improves their physical and mental health’.
Recently, the women weavers exhibited their work at the Religious Art Salon of the SeArte Centre, a space par excellence for creators and visual artists in the Holguín area.
A. Cantero, with data provided by the COA.
TA Translation Team.
Published in News