Type: Community arts and cultural education programme
Organisation: Amazon Action Cultural Association
Location: Belén, Punchana, San Juan de Yanayacu, Ayacucho and Tamshiyacu, Loreto, Peru
Duration: 2006–2013
Participants: Children and young people across five Amazonian communities
Supported by: Volunteer artists and educators from Spain and local Amazonian artists and craftspeople
PROJECT STATEMENT
Canvas of the Jungle was the arts and cultural education strand of Amazon Action Cultural Association, delivered across five communities in the Loreto region of Peru between 2006 and 2013. The programme brought together local Amazonian artists and craftspeople, international volunteers, and Arturo Laime as lead artist and educator, to offer children and young people access to creative practice rooted in both traditional Amazonian techniques and contemporary artistic methods.
The programme operated from the conviction that art is a vehicle for integral human development — building confidence, cultural identity and creative capacity in communities with severely limited access to formal arts education. By placing traditional Amazonian knowledge at the centre of the workshops, Canvas of the Jungle also served as an act of cultural preservation, making visible the artistic heritage of riverside communities to both local participants and international visitors.
PROGRAMME
Workshops were held across Belén and Punchana on the outskirts of Iquitos, and in the riverside communities of San Juan de Yanayacu, Ayacucho and Tamshiyacu. Sessions were led by invited local Amazonian artists and craftspeople, who introduced traditional techniques including printing with natural materials, painting with plant-based pigments, and working with yanchama — the bark cloth used by Amazonian peoples for centuries as both a practical and ceremonial material. Laime contributed academic artistic knowledge and contemporary painting methods, creating a dialogue between traditions rather than a hierarchy between them.
Volunteer artists and educators from Spain joined the programme at different stages, working alongside local facilitators and living within the communities during the workshops. School groups from Lima also participated in exchange visits, contributing to the cultural exchange between urban and Amazonian contexts.
OUTCOMES
The programme produced tangible creative work — pieces created during the workshops, several of which remain in Laime’s personal collection and are available for documentation. Photographic exhibitions were held to document and share the work of participants, and works created during the programme were exhibited within the communities. Some pieces produced during the Canvas of the Jungle years directly informed Laime’s subsequent artistic practice, and the Amazonian series of paintings now available in his gallery carries traces of that period of immersion in the visual culture of the rainforest.
Open to collaborations with cultural institutions, NGOs and educational organisations working through art and community engagement.