Before the pandemic
Once upon a time before the pandemic, on March 10, 2020 I was already feeling somethingwas off in the air. I was hearing more and more often words like coronavirus, COVID-19, epidemic or infections, but I was so busy that, I must admit, I did not give them much importance.
We had just finished the March 1st and 8th events and were preparing for “școala altfel”, plus other new events we were very excited about, in addition to the daily courses and workshops at our studio.
It was only when some students started calling me that they would be absent for two weeks, being in solitary confinement at home because they had traveled abroad, I started looking more into it. Then I decided to order hand sanitizers that were to be placed in each classroom and reception, stronger sanitation solutions, etc. I didn’t get to use them because I closed the studio before they got delivered.
I made this decision on March 11 when it was announced that schools and universities were closing. It seemed to me that the situation was much too uncertain and I did not want to risk the health of my team and that of our students. To keep our morale high, however, we announced that we would only close for a week until we got a chance to figure things out (I was younger and naive then :)).
The state of emergency and online courses
In the meantime, the “State of Emergency” was declared and I realized that there was no point in hoping for a re-opening any time soon.
After I managed to pick myself up 🙂 I started thinking of a plan for the next two months (I was still young and naive :)). First of all, I made sure to inform all of our students about the situation and to assure them that the activities will resume from where we left off as soon as possible. Then we tried to keep in touch through social media by giving them various ideas about how they could spend the lock down creatively.
In the meantime, I was still “haunted” by the online courses proposals but I was feeling some resistance to them. I had the impression that it contradicted the principles on which I built this mini-school, namely to take people from the virtual environment, to free them from the “chains” created by computers and phones that held them “prisoners”.
Luckily my colleagues were more open minded than I and didn’t give up until they convinced me to give it a shot. This is where the madness started because we are not very tech-savvy. We invested a lot of work, time, energy, and (especially) nerves learning the what and the how of video conferencing. Fortunately, the people who participated in the first courses were very forgiving with our clumsiness.
Online courses after 3 months of lock down and isolation
Now, after three months of organizing online art classes, we have managed to create a system and things got easier for us. I still miss the courses and events organized in normal times and I can’t wait for the madness to end and for us to return to our world safely, but I’m glad that we had the chance to continue our activity and, in addition, to reach people outside of Bucharest who couldn’t take our courses before.
We were very excited to have in our virtual classes students from abroad, which convinced us to continue holding some of our courses online even after we resume the activity at our studio.
In conclusion, this period reminded me how important the ability to adapt is and to be open-minded enough to allow diversity to enter our lives.
At the moment we manage to make the lock down more pleasant for about 30 people a day. But most importantly, the online courses have managed to help us, as a team, get over this period more easily, both financially and especially in terms of the satisfaction of being able to continue to do what we love even if it is a bit different.
After all, Art & Hobby Studio was born out of desire to bring a splash of color in everyone’s life, to encourage people to develop their creative side, to have confidence in their own strengths and to fulfill, perhaps, a dream which they postponed for a long time – that of painting / drawing. And if this can be done at the moment only from behind a screen, so be it 🙂
Carmen Stancu
Event organizer at Art & Hobby Studio
