Create a Folding Exhibition

Art exhibitions can be educational as well as attractive. They are suitable for any age, and they can be used to teach chanichim and to facilitate group cooperation. The finished product also gives a sense of achievement, although the process should remain central to the moderator's goals.

In this chapter we present two techniques: the folding exhibition and wall decorations with details for planning and working and outlined projects, plus a guide to which method would suit your group better.

Description

A folding exhibition is a display made up of a number of joined panels any size from 50 x 35 cm (32 x 19") poster size, to quarto (8 x 11", about the smallest you can go). The most usual size is half posterboard, i.e., 25 x 17 cm, which gives enough scope for content and attractive presentation, large enough to see from a distance and to work with close up.

A folding exhibition is made to be touched and played with. It is three dimensional and has games, tests, secrets and gimmicks to present the subject. Some successful ones are viewing windows with pictures or data inside; discs and wheels on split pins with windows to spin for quizzes, choices of subject or different aspects of a subject; tracks along which you can pull objects to uncover answers or points in an issue; flaps, things you can pull up, down or out to reveal data or visuals; other types of layers such as transparencies with tabs for easy lifting to compare maps, etc.; arrows and so on.

Each of these layers is prepared and laminated separately, then holes are cut, runners are prepared for pulling things, and it is put together.

There is continuity of content and visuals among the panels - the whole folder is like a story either chronologically or from its different aspects and there are visual elements which ensure continuity, which can be a continuous border to the whole display, a figure (or figures) that return in each panel or a similar top layer gimmick on each panel. This is indispensable.

The folder not only has to be attractive, it has to be clear. There is far greater use of text than in decor, but it is not just printed or written on. It must be almost as concise as poster work for the titles and then the details must be presented using one of the gimmicks listed above. Use enlarged type, Lettraset, letter-rulers...

Aims:

any of: teaching content, initiating other activities, publicity, summing up a previous event, consolidation.

Time:

This will depend on the size of your exhibition and the number of people working on each panel. Quarto-size - half a day; half postersize - two and a half full days.

Materials and equipment (for decorations, too)

You will need poster paints (decorations only), rulers, pencils, felt tip pens, markers, cutting knives, scissors, Bristol paper (different colours, more than the number of panels you are making), large sheets of cardboard (exhibition only), split pins for handles and wheels (exhibition), plastic glue and gluesticks, liquid glue, coloured paper, string, contact paper (folding exhibition), masking tape, transparent sticky tape, brown paper, or old sheets (decorations), spray paints (decorations), fuse wire (decorations), stock of magazine pictures (folding exhibition).

Extra materials:

What other means do you have at your disposal?

Are you going to use tracing paper to trace some pictures and designs, maps, etc.? Will you be able to make some black and white photo prints and then mount them on coloured background?

What background materials are availoable as source materials or for copying, particularly visuals? Are you limited to this kit and the posters or do you have more books, etc.?

Do you have access to an overhead projector, epidiascope or slide projector to project pictures, transparencies or slides onto large sheets of paper so that the group can outline and draw good pictures from a projection? What about preparing charts with Power Point or simple computer graphics?

Do you have a photocopier to copy photos and texts - you can copy real photographs in photocopy and then colour in with pastel crayons or pencils, which is very attractive, particularly if you make enlarged photocopies? If you enlarge texts, titles, it saves complicated lettering... The same goes for enlarging designs, parts of the B.G., expo. Do you have Lettraset (transfertech etc.) or rulers with Hebrew and English lettering or are you going to word process texts and enlarge them afterwards?

Work procedure

This includes brainstorming, planning to production, as follows:

1. Theme - help the group brainstorm the theme, which could be one of the following - Ben Gurion, from pioneer to statesman; Israel - past, present and future; Zionism - the future; the Land of the Book today; Israel and the Middle East partners; Jewish leaders. Link it with the theme of the event! Each is very different, of course.

2. Message -. this is a policy statement, a platform which is going to be central to the whole exhibit and will split into different sub-headings or different aspects, BUT WHICH CAN ALWAYS BE SUMMED UP IN ONE SENTENCE, e.g., "Israel is only at the beginning of the road"; "Each leader is great in his generation"; "Many thought and talked, but Ben Gurion acted"; and so on.

If you don't get this sorted out first, you will lose on the teamwork and coherency of your production.

3. Content - briefly remind the group of time and facility available, then brainstorm all the ideas you want to include in terms of content, who's interested in what and whether it all fits together as an idea.

This is the moment to allocate areas of interest and send the group off to research (you have materials available ahead of time) if necessary. Work may be done in twos and threes and you should be looking at the visual content too (photos, pictures to research).

4. Outline and organization - this is when you decide finally who does what, what comes at the beginning, the middle and the end; it is where the visual plan goes down on paper including size, media, what it will look like, how long each stage will take.

The planning stage must be extremely thorough and the group must understand the visual gimmicks. The subject for each panel must be planned as a group as must the gimmick so that there is visual continuity and no overplay on one type of gimmick.

Sometimes you need to make a full-size plan on paper. All groups should have an overall layout plan to ensure success.