Peace Initiative -  Volunteer  - Creative Learning Programs - World Peace Residency - Southern Cross Peace Artwork - Norway Peace Artworks - USA Starr Earthwork 2002 - Albania -  Michigan Millenium Project - Articles and Publications - Links

Creative Learning Programs

World Peace Art Initiaive
Black River Public School
Holland, MI USA

Sunday, June 11, 2006
Cultural exchange

Holland teacher travels to Albania through art initiative
BY CHERI McSPADEN Life&Styles editor

A Black River Public School art teacher just brought back better news from abroad. "The Albanians love America, because we're trying to help them," said Peter Middleton, who traveled to the country as part of a group called the World Peace Art Initiative (WPAI).

IN ALBANIA: Black River art teacher Peter Middleton, far right, explores the Skenderbeu Castle in Kruje outside Tirana, Albania, with members of the World Peace Art Initiative.

The group plans "large art projects that bring together people at whatever skill level, and at the end, they get something beautiful they did when they worked together," Middleton said. "That's a short explanation of it." Albania will be the site of the next WPAI art project. "One of the people in our group was a professor at Western Michigan University, and one of his students was from Albania," Middleton said. "She learned about the (WPAI projects) and said, 'I'd love to have one of these in my country.' And he said, 'What kind of concept or ideas do you have?' With her energy and enthusiasm, she developed a drawing of double-headed eagles (a symbol on Albania's flag) and she connected to people over there, and we started communicating. That's how it kind of came together ? Being a blond in a country filled with brunettes, Middleton felt like an "odd duck," and "not so tan." "But what was really different about Albania, they're a growing country," he said. "They were left in 1991 with nothing. The Communist government just left them. So all of their infrastructure, roads, building, everything, just went into utter chaos, and they've been working very, very hard to rebuild their country. They have a pride; they're very nationalistic. They really want to build their country and develop."

HISTORY: Peter Middleton takes a photo through one of the 600,000 bunkers left from the Cold War years in Albania.

Even though 70 percent of Albanian citizens are Muslim and the rest is Greek Orthodox and Christian, "people are living together peacefully. There is no terrorism or bombing ? people live and work together because of this energy. Man, they're building everywhere. You ride through the country and there are all these houses in all stages of being built, but their mean income is something like $2,000 a year." Albania borders Greece, Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia, but is heavily influenced by Italy. "The young people are just like young people here; dress the same," Middleton said. "Most of their television and film comes from Italy, satellite stuff, so there's a lot of Italian food ? and they listen to American music. "The one thing that was really different, and I think it's because of the Turkish influence, because it's part of the Ottoman Empire, the girls' shoes come to a sharp point and curve up. A lot of them do. There's an extra 2 inches on the end of that shoe that has no function. Really interesting. "The older men all wear jackets all day, and their weather is like Southern California. They're tweed and stuff. The boys don't wear T-shirts or collared shirts, they wear longer-sleeved, tight-fitting shirts, like soccer players. Soccer's big." At the workshops Middleton led, students were "hungry for Western ideas about art and thinking and culture." "They have a very traditional background. (They have) very classically trained teachers, teaching classical art and art-making. In their classroom, they're doing figure sculpture and they're doing figure drawing and they're doing painting in a very normal way, so 20th century modernism is very exciting to them -- conceptual art, conceptual thinking."

Middleton suggested a collaborative painting. "That whole idea of give-and-take, three minds on one painting, working together, was something they'd never thought of before," he said. "It was like breaking out of their comfort zone ? We were dealing with color, form and shape, and movement. And they just thought that was wild." The students, who normally spend two weeks working on a painting, were stunned that the painting came together so quickly. "Out of the group, I think we ended up with four completed artworks ?" Middleton said. "Two of them were done in two hours, and these kids thought this was really cool. They were busting loose, saying, we're gonna do this again. And they invited me back." And it wasn't just the young people who were enthusiastic. "There's a spirit, a passion ? On a business end, I think we had three meetings scheduled. The first day we went to a meeting, and as soon as we got done with our presentation about doing this large-scale art project in their country, they would get on their cell phone. Then they'd say, 'We just set up a meeting for 2, can you make that?' We went to 19 meetings when we were there for one week." He snapped his fingers and said, "Everything happens like that. Everybody was just ready. They were just hungry for what we had. Never got a negative for anything we did. Everything was just positive, positive, positive." The project is scheduled to be installed in October 2007, and the World Peace Initiative members worked to try to line up hundreds people to help. But the interpreter warned them not to use the word volunteer when asking Albanians to help. "They take that as an insult," Middleton said. "The Communist regime expected that; it's your duty to work for free ? so instead, you say, 'We want to include you,' or 'If you join us, you get to participate in this big project, and you get to decide.' They think of volunteering as a socialist kind of idea -- 'We're all working together for the betterment of everybody.'" The art will likely end up in a city square that used to hold Communist sculptures. The city is Albania's largest, Tirana, and although Middleton estimates Tirana is the size of Grand Rapids, he said very few buildings have more than five stories. Tirana's streets are filled with horses and carts, bicycles, mopeds "and a lot of outdated Mercedes burning diesel fuel." "When kids get out of school at 2:30 in the afternoon, they all walk," Middleton said. "They walk down this main boulevard in Tirana. That's the thing to do is to go walking ? to show who you're with, and that's where you meet people. Like the way kids in cars cruise Ottawa Beach and sit around in cars. It's like they promenade. It's where boys and girls meet each other. And if you have a beau, you hang on that person and walk down the street." And maybe because of all that walking, you won't see overweight kids in Albania. "I only saw one McDonald's ? and it was next to the college campus. One of the guys who was a high school student, who was our interpreter ? said they don't like McDonald's. They don't like burgers and stuff." Middleton laughed and said, "Now if it was a LAMB burger, they'd probably go for it." Cheri McSpaden is the Sentinel's Life&Style editor. Contact her at (616) 546-4266 or cheri.mcspaden@hollandsentinel.com.