Grafting Layers

Following on this thinking of layers comes these visual layers. Seasonal plants, identified and mapped across the farm and linked to their use and place within the life of the farm environment, History stories based on what has happened on the farm and the grafted stories from other places and times placed into the place that is West Town. I am playing with these layers with GIMP photo-editing software.

What has been happening?

It has been an interesting Spring! Lots of farm based projects and explorations into local food. The farm, the field, the orchard are all places where exploration and learning can develop. The joy of looking up into a huge spring cabbage leaf and seeing all the veins outlined in the sun, the feel of clay and tadpoles between the toes and the secret noises of the woodland are all pointers in a way of working that is proving more and more fascinating. Alongside all this awe and discovery is the sheer logistics of keeping projects rolling along. My work seems to be a jigsaw full of pieces that seem to have a life of their own.

Badger Mind Maps!

Mind maps are an interesting way of gathering, linking and presenting ideas and information. Here is an one supporting the Badger Tails session. Check this page for more information and how to contribute your ideas.

Badger Tales!

A chance conversation with a teacher about a farm visit led to this project! Set in the red earth of the old railway cutting at West Town a mix of storytelling, drama, word play and environmental explorations and artworks will lead groups into the nocturnal world of Brock the Badger. Gill. the teacher, mentioned that her 7 year olds were writing about nocturnal creatures as part of their Literacy SATs. I am wondering whether any other schools would like to explore Badger Tales. More sessions make it easier to justify a longer preparation time.Time to go calling again!

Wow! Woodcraft Folk Stories!

I had the pleasure and privilage of working with a group of Woodcraft Folk Venturers this evening. They were a group of bright and aware individuals who had expressed an interest in storytelling. We explored some introductions to telling and I wondered whether we would produce some telling of complete stories. What appeared was so much better than I had imagined. There was Sleeping Beauty told by the misunderstood Wicked Fairy, the Gingerbread House Witch remembering her death in the oven, a wolf war veteran dragging himself between the little pig's houses and Goldilocks told by a forest wolf, a cottage door, some hot porridge, a bed and a chair! The groups used a whole range of presentation techniques and developed their tales within a 5 minute deadline. It was a joy to facilitate and set me thinking about what a group of young storytellers could develop and the skills they wwould need along the way. Campfire stories, podcast stories, stories to take a visiting! There is a lot that could happen. I wonder if it will? Set me thinking about what different aspects of storytelling could be covered in such a project. Back later on that!

A banner!

I am quite excited by the commission of an enthusiastic education storytelling banner! Steve the  sign writer is turning my rough sketches into a banner to decorate my storytelling space. Certainly outside at festivals storytelling can disappear without a visual presence. I am looking at creating a vegetable image  display to further enhance the area. I'll post some images when it's done.

Preparing for a workshop!

I am working with the Woodcraft folk Venturers this Thursday on a storytelling workshop. Should be fun! It will be interesting to see where they would like to go with it. Stories around campfires might be one direction and a story blog would be another. Joy Simpson from DES gave some site feedback on posting story clips and the idea of a gallery of tales would be really good. I wonder what the Venturers will think? Joy's blog http://literacyresourcesandideas.edublogs.org/ is a real treasure trove of ideas and resources
In the course of putting the workshop session together I found this site which has some nice ideas for storymaking games. 

organicARTS' thought maps

organicARTS had a morning of review and action planning with Mary Schwarz, an arts consultant. This was an excellent session with lots of productive thinking. I really liked Mary's love of post it notes to generate and organise ideas. The challenge is to record these ideas for future discussion. I have been exploring the XMIND software which has done a rather good job. The ideas can be looked at in different ways and exported out as images, web pages and text outlines. Just what I wanted really. The software is free to download and cross platform. I am going to try it out with some 8-9 year olds next week along with VUE which offers similar features. When children ask how toget hold of the software to use at home then you know that things are working!!