Campaigners supporting autism awareness in the kingdom have come up with a series of artistic challenges to carry out at home as plans for outside community events have been scuppered by the continuing Covid-19 crisis.

Baloo’s Buddies at RIA Institute, well known in Bahrain for staging large scale, inclusive and collaborative art events during April as part of a global campaign, say they are determined to make their mark once again this year. 

“The first week focused on inclusion during stay at home,” said the brains behind the art initiative Dr. Sarah Clarke, founder of Baloo’s Buddies named after her brown Labrador and other pets who work as therapy dogs with students at the institute.

“This week we’re looking at celebrating our differences and next week will be all about calming when life is upside-down.

“The final session is called Let’s Communicate – which I think we are all having to learn to be better at during this time.

“We wanted people to think about issues that families with children who are on the autism spectrum deal with every day while engaging them in ‘stay at home’ activities.” 

Among other projects, supporters will recall the large graffiti wall and wooden jigsaw they created in 2018 at Harbour Gate, the upcycled T-shirts made there in 2019 and the successful Big Draw event staged at The Avenues last year. 

Thankfully, Sarah said, Baloo and Arty the Autistic Camel - a cheerful character who features in all the art events - came up with the ‘fabulous alternatives’ to mark April as Autism Awareness Month in 2020.

“Arty’s Art Challenge for Autism Awareness is something that everyone can take part in,” added Christine Gordon, co-founder of the RIA Institute in Adliya. “You don’t have to be a great artist, it’s open to everyone from the ages of two to 102 and you can use whatever medium you like to express your ideas and help us spread awareness about, and acceptance of autism through art.

“Sarah always comes up with something unique and this year she did us proud again, thinking out-of-the-box to create a community event during stay-at-home!”

Each week on Wednesday Arty posts a theme on Baloo’s Buddies Instagram page and a Facebook events page, as well as on GDNlife, Bahrain’s own social media platform.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, can sketch, paint, sculpt, knit, embroider, film, photograph or make marks in any way they want, around the theme.

For a chance to win a family set of art supplies from Baloo’s Buddies, participants in Arty’s Art Challenge should:

1.         Post your artwork for one of the weekly themes on Instagram, Facebook or GDNlife with the hashtags #artys_art_challenge and #baloosbuddies

2.         Like @baloosbuddies on Instagram or Baloo’s Buddies Bahrain on Facebook and the articles published on GDNlife.

3.         Tag a friend to help spread the word about the challenge.

A number of Baloo’s Buddies’ artist volunteers have taken the time to work on this year’s art initiative too.

“Artist Othmann, Christine’s son, who is the reason why we started the Art for Autism Awareness events, is also taking part from home with his sister, Mary,” added Sarah.  “We can’t wait to see their finished works.”

• For more information call Sarah on 38338064.