Info

Children's motivating kite project by the Hanne Landgraf Foundation with the Chilean artist Jorge Pinto

Making paper kites yourself is the easiest thing in the world, one would think. But it's not that easy after all. You need a lot of stamina, concentration and above all a patient person who shows you how it works, which paper is the best, which wooden strips are the easiest to fly a kite with, how long a kite's tail can be so that the dragon can be steered well and not to forget, how do you get your dragon to fly in the first place.

65 elementary school children from the Werner von Siemens School in Karlsruhe were able to experience all of this at a one-week kite workshop organized by the Hanne Landgraf Foundation in October with the Karlsruhe-based Chilean artist and kite expert Jorge Pinto Sotomayor.

They will never forget this event, all the children were sure of that at the final kite festival at the school. They listened with devotion to the "kite man" from Chile as he told them the story of kite art, folded colorful paper with untrained hands in order to marvel at their own professional works at the end and proudly show them to their parents and siblings at the kite festival.

"A great project that we should definitely repeat!" The teachers, the principal Sylvia Schäfer and the vice-principal Uwe Melzer of the school also thought. The kite course was financed by a donation from the Karlsruhe company Kraus & Naimer, whose boss had wished "to get something going that children from socially disadvantaged families could have a lot of fun with". And they certainly did – including the teachers involved and the kite artist Jorge Pinto himself!

Photos: Hanne Landgraf Foundation