This is the first time I got the chills for a car advert.
I have spent the last four weeks learning more about stories and story telling in the work place, drama and theatrical stories and how these can be incorporated into the corporate environment. Stories shape an idea or concept into something that can be understood by everyone. Stories create an identity, stories facilitate exchange of ideas and stories can help someone or something change the way they are perceived in the world.
Watch this ad for an illustration of how stories are tools for changing identity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SKL254Y_jtc
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Story. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2012
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Reading club artists
Another reading club goes by. Three more left until I leave for Malawi (eeeeeeeek!!). We added another element into the mix today: I brought an object along and asked the children to draw a short story about said thing. Today was a beautiful shell. I gave them as example: they were asked to choose a character, a favourite character, and to elaborate on it, including the object, or in the case of the shell, something relating to it, such as sea, waves, water etc etc etc. Some of the children took my example almost exact: a dog, standing at the seas edge, wanting to get a bone that was buried at the bottom. Others' interpretations were divine!
Amanda told a short story about a bird in a field hunting for a snail and the snail is running away (snail, with shell, you get the drift) (see bird, loose object one flower stem away is the snail - or the memory of where it was because about half way along the page is the actual snail, zooming away)
Here we have a cat, who is looking for a bowl of thick, warm milk and mistakes the shell at the bottom of the river for such a treat.
A young boy decides to go fishing at river and catch himself some nice ol' fish. Except he appears to have forgotten his rod and so stands perplexed at the side :)
Play some music, sit under the trees, feel warm and relaxed, doodle on a page and these are your results.
Amanda told a short story about a bird in a field hunting for a snail and the snail is running away (snail, with shell, you get the drift) (see bird, loose object one flower stem away is the snail - or the memory of where it was because about half way along the page is the actual snail, zooming away)
Here we have a cat, who is looking for a bowl of thick, warm milk and mistakes the shell at the bottom of the river for such a treat.
A young boy decides to go fishing at river and catch himself some nice ol' fish. Except he appears to have forgotten his rod and so stands perplexed at the side :)Play some music, sit under the trees, feel warm and relaxed, doodle on a page and these are your results.
*
The story we told at pass the parcel today was about a dog that, no matter how cross he was with his chicken friend who did not want to play with him, the dog always helped the chicken out (such as taking him to the doctor, helping him out of a hole and then eventually letting him be and not play with him). Such deep, lesson thinking children I have!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Reading Clubs
A month or two ago I started a reading club at my local library in Irene. For want of a better word, I call it a reading club but what I do it every Thursday, I go to the library between 2.45 and 3.30 and whatever children are there are invited to come a play a few games and then we read a story.
It hasn't been the most consistent occurrence - I started two weeks before the April hols. Then over hols I was away one of the weeks and then there were a million public holidays. So the librarians and I decided to start again in May.
I recognised most of the kids who came this last Thursday. They came previously and seemed to enjoy it. But you can never tell with children, unless they come again and again and this is what these children did. Most of them are from the Irene Middle School, a poorer school in the area.
I took a lot of what I know about workshops from watching workshops that Tristan gave to school children at the National Arts Fest, and again at his old school. The theme was game playing as a way to drop barriers and to make the exchange of information easy.
To start, I get the kids to stretch and to feel the specific muscles lengthening. Then on the first few times I got the children to play Columbian Hypnosis. This is played with two people: one is the hypnotists and other the one being hypnotised. The hypnotiser holds their hand a few centimetres away from the face of the other. And then they move their hand, up down, round, over, under, as they want and the other has to follow. Then they swap. This is kind of what it looks like:
The children were at first unsure and even now I have to tap some of them on the shoulder to remind them that they must move their feet. Sometimes I direct the hypnotists and tell them where to take their partner.
The best game I have played thus far is pass the parcel. The parcel is any goodie I have, this last time a bangle. And with music wafting out of my cell phone we pass the bangle around and the person who has it when the music starts has to start the story and the next time the music stops they gave to elaborate it. The story we made last Thursday was about a chicken who ate a cow because they were fighting. The cow to get revenge made the chicken sick and he vomited up the cow (not digested yet!) but because it was quite a feet the chicken passed out (dead I think).
Wow as I write this I see it is a very dark story. But in some points I had to use my imagination. One of the youngest littel boys can speak very little English so between the older children they decided that if he should get the bangle the boy next to him would quickly translate into Sepedi and then translate back into English the little one's part of the story. But he was having none of it - in his very little English he gave his part of the story. Then the other children and I would grant ourselves creative licence to make it a bit more structured.
My favourite part thought was when, after pass the parcel, I mentioned off hand that I had gone to dance class that morning and was feeling a bit stiff, as I got up off the ground. SO after a quick conference between three of the girls they asked me (maybe more told me) to show them the dancing that I do. So right there, outside the library (praying that I was not disturbing the ballet classes going on in the hall right next to the library) I put on Kwela Kwela and I taught all of them (even the boys were breaking our their dusty dance shoes) how to do some zumba moves, some latin american dance moves, some afr0-fusion and even some hip hop swaggers. And they loved it and I LOVED it.
They were also starting to expect the games that we played. AT one point I get them to walk and behave like their favourite animal. The first time they all dropped down to all fours. Then I made them all name their favourite animal and then embody that energy. This time round they were ready. Where before I had to coax it out of them, on Thursday I was met with Lion! Giraffe! Baboon! Frog! Leopard! Bee! And off they went, embodying and impersonating their favourite animal. And I never looked at it this way until the librarian pointed it out. I was doing this because it challenged the creative minds of the children, to see how best to move their bodies to be the animal. The librarian said it was also teaching them about the animal, not just in a classroom, in a book, but actually being the animal.
Before I get too theoretical about embodiment (this is what I wrote a 50 page thesis on), I will love and leave you. I will put some pics of said reading club up soon. x
It hasn't been the most consistent occurrence - I started two weeks before the April hols. Then over hols I was away one of the weeks and then there were a million public holidays. So the librarians and I decided to start again in May.
I recognised most of the kids who came this last Thursday. They came previously and seemed to enjoy it. But you can never tell with children, unless they come again and again and this is what these children did. Most of them are from the Irene Middle School, a poorer school in the area.
I took a lot of what I know about workshops from watching workshops that Tristan gave to school children at the National Arts Fest, and again at his old school. The theme was game playing as a way to drop barriers and to make the exchange of information easy.
To start, I get the kids to stretch and to feel the specific muscles lengthening. Then on the first few times I got the children to play Columbian Hypnosis. This is played with two people: one is the hypnotists and other the one being hypnotised. The hypnotiser holds their hand a few centimetres away from the face of the other. And then they move their hand, up down, round, over, under, as they want and the other has to follow. Then they swap. This is kind of what it looks like:
The children were at first unsure and even now I have to tap some of them on the shoulder to remind them that they must move their feet. Sometimes I direct the hypnotists and tell them where to take their partner.
The best game I have played thus far is pass the parcel. The parcel is any goodie I have, this last time a bangle. And with music wafting out of my cell phone we pass the bangle around and the person who has it when the music starts has to start the story and the next time the music stops they gave to elaborate it. The story we made last Thursday was about a chicken who ate a cow because they were fighting. The cow to get revenge made the chicken sick and he vomited up the cow (not digested yet!) but because it was quite a feet the chicken passed out (dead I think).
Wow as I write this I see it is a very dark story. But in some points I had to use my imagination. One of the youngest littel boys can speak very little English so between the older children they decided that if he should get the bangle the boy next to him would quickly translate into Sepedi and then translate back into English the little one's part of the story. But he was having none of it - in his very little English he gave his part of the story. Then the other children and I would grant ourselves creative licence to make it a bit more structured.
My favourite part thought was when, after pass the parcel, I mentioned off hand that I had gone to dance class that morning and was feeling a bit stiff, as I got up off the ground. SO after a quick conference between three of the girls they asked me (maybe more told me) to show them the dancing that I do. So right there, outside the library (praying that I was not disturbing the ballet classes going on in the hall right next to the library) I put on Kwela Kwela and I taught all of them (even the boys were breaking our their dusty dance shoes) how to do some zumba moves, some latin american dance moves, some afr0-fusion and even some hip hop swaggers. And they loved it and I LOVED it.
They were also starting to expect the games that we played. AT one point I get them to walk and behave like their favourite animal. The first time they all dropped down to all fours. Then I made them all name their favourite animal and then embody that energy. This time round they were ready. Where before I had to coax it out of them, on Thursday I was met with Lion! Giraffe! Baboon! Frog! Leopard! Bee! And off they went, embodying and impersonating their favourite animal. And I never looked at it this way until the librarian pointed it out. I was doing this because it challenged the creative minds of the children, to see how best to move their bodies to be the animal. The librarian said it was also teaching them about the animal, not just in a classroom, in a book, but actually being the animal.
Before I get too theoretical about embodiment (this is what I wrote a 50 page thesis on), I will love and leave you. I will put some pics of said reading club up soon. x
Friday, December 31, 2010
Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi
And so begins an isiXhosa story...
...such a very long time ago, in a place not very far from you, there lived a boy and girl. The boy, a farmer, planted all sorts of delightful plants - butternut, peas, mealies, tomatoes - and picked them when they were fat on the vines and stalks. The girl, who wasn't a farmer would none-the-less help the boy everyday in his plantings and pickings.
A few days after the start of this story the boy pulled the girl aside at the end of a particularly normal day and whispered a secret to her.
"I don't really want to be a farmer", he told her quickly, " I want to be a traveller."
The girl was excited and whispered back, "Well, let's go and be travellers, I will go with you and we can see everything and anything that we can only imagine now... Let's leave tomorrow!"
She made up her mind for both of them and that night they slept deeply.
Before the air could begin to warm the next morning, the boy and girl had vanished. I am unsure about how eary they left, suffice to say it was too dark for me to see anything. But by the time it became light enough to see they had left their homes far, far behind. Each carried a bag with a little bit of food, all their savings and a warm jersey. And at the heels of the boy a puppy trotted, almost too close but never quite bumping he's nose on the foot of the walking boy. The air warmed to its usual salty smells.
By the time they wanted to eat lunch they had left the tree filled place that used to be their homes, and they could only spy grass and trees for as far as their eyes could see. At the very next tree that they passed (which was not very soon as there were few trees) they sat and ate lunch. The puppy (whom we will call Pup for this story) was far, far too excited to stay still and after swallowing he's food in three and a half mouthfuls he commenced chasing his tail repeatetiously (Oh dear... please excuse absence of correct spelling in the case of absence of dictionary).
And not so very long after they had sat down to eat but a very, very old man sat down next to them, with a lazy eye and an oh-so-sad smile on his face. His skin, so very leathery, was covered on blue ink tattoos and his body was wrapped in clothes too big for him.
He sighed deeply when both the children looked at him and only then did he say anything and even that was filled with such sadness. He said he was tasked to help them but that he didn't actually know how much help he could actually give them. He said he had a bottle of sweet tea to give them, a magical tea that they could only use when they really, really needed it, otherwise it would not work as it was meant to. He sighed again, very deeply, at the end of his story.
...to be continued...
...such a very long time ago, in a place not very far from you, there lived a boy and girl. The boy, a farmer, planted all sorts of delightful plants - butternut, peas, mealies, tomatoes - and picked them when they were fat on the vines and stalks. The girl, who wasn't a farmer would none-the-less help the boy everyday in his plantings and pickings.
A few days after the start of this story the boy pulled the girl aside at the end of a particularly normal day and whispered a secret to her.
"I don't really want to be a farmer", he told her quickly, " I want to be a traveller."
The girl was excited and whispered back, "Well, let's go and be travellers, I will go with you and we can see everything and anything that we can only imagine now... Let's leave tomorrow!"
She made up her mind for both of them and that night they slept deeply.
Before the air could begin to warm the next morning, the boy and girl had vanished. I am unsure about how eary they left, suffice to say it was too dark for me to see anything. But by the time it became light enough to see they had left their homes far, far behind. Each carried a bag with a little bit of food, all their savings and a warm jersey. And at the heels of the boy a puppy trotted, almost too close but never quite bumping he's nose on the foot of the walking boy. The air warmed to its usual salty smells.
By the time they wanted to eat lunch they had left the tree filled place that used to be their homes, and they could only spy grass and trees for as far as their eyes could see. At the very next tree that they passed (which was not very soon as there were few trees) they sat and ate lunch. The puppy (whom we will call Pup for this story) was far, far too excited to stay still and after swallowing he's food in three and a half mouthfuls he commenced chasing his tail repeatetiously (Oh dear... please excuse absence of correct spelling in the case of absence of dictionary).
And not so very long after they had sat down to eat but a very, very old man sat down next to them, with a lazy eye and an oh-so-sad smile on his face. His skin, so very leathery, was covered on blue ink tattoos and his body was wrapped in clothes too big for him.
He sighed deeply when both the children looked at him and only then did he say anything and even that was filled with such sadness. He said he was tasked to help them but that he didn't actually know how much help he could actually give them. He said he had a bottle of sweet tea to give them, a magical tea that they could only use when they really, really needed it, otherwise it would not work as it was meant to. He sighed again, very deeply, at the end of his story.
...to be continued...
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