Encouraging creative communication through photography

A photojournalist with a passion for social causes, Paola Marcello has been in the field of photography since 2006. Reporting mostly on social topics she has published several books and held exhibitions relating to the topic of immigrants, disabled people, dementia in the aged and life stories of old trader families. Paola sees photography as a way of expression and a tool to bring to to the public domain stories about people who are in a way marginalised in society. Having worked with disabled people in her hometown of Merano in Italy, Paola has embarked on conducting photogrpahy workshops for disabled people.

This endeavour led her to the Smile Centre, a vocational and educational centre for children and young people in Unawatuna, Galle. Since February 2015 Paola has been working with the children of Smile Centre helping students learn about new forms of communication and observation through photography. This has allowed the children to develop and progress their creative and narrative abilities.

During the last two months the children have developed a love for photography and have been able to explore and view the world with a different eye which has led to better expression of emotions in a creative way through this new medium.

“The students participated for this special photography project with so much enthusiasm and would never stop of shooting pictures. Each photo excursion (beach trips, village trips, trips to historical places) concluded with some remarkable and fun for them. What amazing results we observed at the end of this experience. We also developed  the idea of producing postcards with those pictures on it,” says Paola Marcello.

The main aim of producing postcards is to share their art with the community and raise money for the maintenance of educational programmes in Smile Centre. With this project the student of the centre have  demonstrated their competence through the way of art and has strengthened them.

Smile can be contacted on http://www.smiledcentre.org or 091-2226528.

By Tina Edward Gunawardhana