Meeting 3:
So on Sunday, March 15, we found out that schools were being shut down because of the Corona virus, so we made the decision to transition into online club meetings. We made sure everyone who had joined our club received the message, by texting a group chat we made on Instagram. We met up on an app called Houseparty, similar to a group Facetime but this app was for both Apple and Android users, from 1:00pm to 2:45pm.
We knew there would be some challenges regarding materials since not everybody had the art materials we had planned to work with. So as a workaround we allowed free reign over the medium used for our members. We were able to set up the call and out of a general consensus and based on the materials we had at our homes, we used paint, acrylic and/or watercolor. We were all able to struggle together.
Instead of using a prompt, which would be hard for us to display on the app, we continued on with free draw and as a result, most of us used photo references. As this happened we guided our members if they had difficulty with what they were making. For example, Some people had trouble making specific colors, since they didn't completely understand how the color wheel works, so we explained that if they wanted a darker shade of pink to add some green, or brown, which relates to the concept of adding complementary colors together. Additionally, since we were using paint, it took longer to dry and not everyone was able to fully complete their work in the hour and forty-five minutes we had allotted to the meeting.
The way we conducted the meeting on Houseparty can be seen in the screenshot below, where 5 people held up their paintings that they had been working on for the hour and 45 minutes.
Olivia: When we had first started the club, we never expected to have virtual meetings, so this was an odd experience to deal with. But we were able to come up with an online solution for both Apple and Android users. Because this was online, my WiFi wasn't that great, so audio would sometimes cut out and people would need to repeat themselves, which was not ideal, but it was the best we could do. This meeting was also much more exciting, since we all were in quarantine for a week and hadn’t talked to each other frequently, making it a great social and creative outlet for everyone.
Helen: I think some setbacks to using Houseparty despite wanting to make our club accessible was that some people may have been too shy to join a video room. Additionally, I think that while we were making out transition into digital work, so were our members and other people who could have joined the club, so accessibility may have been something we weren’t able to achieve.
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