Halloween Tales in Newtown

Shadow puppets and tales of overcoming fear!

Sometimes entering chaos can lead to interesting tales. There were more people at this community event than expected. Straight into shadow puppet making and then tell a story with the puppets. The story? Well create it as we go along of course. Some great sound effects from the audience made all the difference. Thanks to Newtown Community Association for inviting me!

Community scale celebrations are vital to sustaining the quality and fabric of where and how we live. Faces become individuals, places become alive and it is fun! The interesting thing with the work I do is meeting people in different contexts. The family exploring the farm becomes the child in school becomes the shopper on the Love Local Food van and the world I live in becomes a little bit more threaded together.

Winter Woods

This is a new project being developed for this winter. It will link explorations of woodland on the farm with tree planting, fire lighting and storytelling. Sessions might continue into dusk with shadow puppets. This post will be updated with more information as the session planning develops.

Check out some of the background notes in this mind map below.

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!

Eleanor Rigby, Old Misery and tales of change

I have just had an interesting session exploring some story making with a group of 10 year olds. The class are working on songs of the Beatles and seed planting!! This rather nice video of Eleanor Rigby and a subsequent discussion of the lyrics set quite a sombre note which was picked up with the French tale of Old Misery, a cantankerous old lady who is fiercely protective of her apple tree. The children were set the challenge of creating stories which established a feeling of loneliness but then lifted and changed the mood. There were to be no "fluffy bunny" happy endings though! 15 minutes and a lot of talk later we sat down to a series of tales involving friendships broken and reforged, illness, loss, despair and hope! I am hoping to post some of the recordings up on the site. There is something very powerful when such a core theme is opened up and the video and storytelling introduction worked very nicely.