Encounter with the Book
Featuring the exhibition, Grigor Khanjyan: Beyond Image, Encounter with the Book educational program aimed at presenting the illustrated book as an art form, inspire a love and appreciation to reading in children, raise the importance of the physical book in a digital era. During the program participants learned fundamental bookmaking vocabulary and techniques, designed and mad their own books, as well as got familiarized with the physical production of the book in a printing house.
The program was designed for public schools of all grades in cooperation with students of the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts.
Workshops: Each week two school groups participated in the program, during which they were introduced to Grigor Khanjyan’s heritage in book illustration, getting familiarized with the Book: its physical and intellectual content.
The second part of the workshop continued in the library environment at CCA’s Interactive Study Center. Each session featured a selected poem or story by famous Armenian writer Hovhannes Tumanyan, corresponding to the curriculum of the engaged school class. Children participated in interactive storytelling, followed by a book-making workshop, during which they learned some paper engineering techniques, designed and mad their own illustrated accordion books. As part of the program, students from the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts participated as graphic instructors, who also worked on the design of the printed version of the final book.
Visit to Printing House: Each Saturday participant school groups for the week were encouraged to visit a printing house, accompanied by their teachers/parents and CCA representatives, where they were introduced to the production of books and experimented with printmaking tools and techniques.
Publication of a book: The program culmination were the publication of a small edition of a book, featuring the workshop-related works by Hovhannes Tumanyan with illustrations of participant children and engaged students’ design. Also, a small number of books was presented to regional school libraries as CCA’s outreach effort.
Program sponsor was Beeline Armenia.