What is Pentimento?
Manu Budhathoki DUSA Vice President Community shares a creative project she has been doing to support students’ wellbeing.
“Pentimento is a yearlong campaign I started this academic year (2023-2024). The main purpose of the campaign is to promote emotional expression through creative expression. I wanted to tap into people’s interest and potential in art and culture at Dundee University who are looking for a space, events and become part of the art and culture community on campus.
The campaign’s focus is to bring light on how art and creativity helps people as an outlet of their emotional traumas, experiences, and many of us rely on it. Some events and initiatives on the campaign is mentioned below.
Pop-up Art walls:
I ran two art walls last semester. Every art wall had a prompt for example, the first one I ran for a week during freshers’ week in September 2023 was ‘How are you feeling today?’. We had over 200 students participate and painted small bits on a massive piece of canvas paper.
The second pop up wall was for ‘Breast Cancer Awareness’ month, which comparatively had a lower turn out.
Brush and Booze:
- The Brush and Booze event was part of the Pentimento campaign that focuses to promote emotional awareness through creative expression on campus.
- The event had two sets of life-drawing, and general painting session.
- Organized the ‘Brush and Booze’ event at the Liar in collaboration with Contemporary Art Practice Society (CAPSOC), and Dundee Electronic Music Society (DEMS).
- Raised profits go to CanDu our Raising and Giving (RAG) charity of the year.
- The VPF amazingly added the fundraising element to this element to get CanDu on board and supported to organize the event.
Gender Expression Painting session and Open Mic:
- Marking LGBTQ+ History Month- Organized a Gender Expression Painting session with School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
- Aiming to promote personal expression, and a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community through creative expression.
- This session was intimate and was a great opportunity for our participants to bond with each other. The speakers shared their experiences every 10 minutes, which led the participants to learn various struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community
National Student Money Week campaign x Pentimento:
- National Student money week is a UK- wide campaign led by VP-Student Wellbeing and University’s financial unit.
- I am collaborating with university to promote Student’s Financial wellbeing through a painting session on emotional expression scheduled for 4th March.”