PERFORMANCE, STORYTELLING, THEATER, ART, PLAY, CULTURE, CO-CREATION

REGION: Southern Denmark
MUNICIPALITY: Vejle
PROCEDURE: 2022
DAILY OFFER: Børnehuset Skibet

Snow story: Børnehuset Skibet (2022)

At Børnehuset Skibet, we have a regular activity of doing theater performances of different stories with the children who are about to start school. We are a large daycare center and have 3 rooms with children who will soon be starting school.

Over the years, the form has followed roughly the same formula, with a viewing for parents afterwards.

This year we would like to work with a good story for children again, but in our planning for this year, we have made some considerations:

Can we do it another way?

Can we bring in new art forms and methods?

Can we do it with less focus on an end product?

Can we do this in a way that opens up the story to the children through trials inspired by drama games, music and digital media - and where the focus is not on "practicing lines" but on playing with the characters.

Can we make it so that it's still one big joint project for 3 rooms, even if they have separate workshops?

And can we do it in a way that might spill over into everyday life.

And through this, we can learn a way of working with art and culture that can be used in new programs in the future and that is not locked into traditional forms.

- How have you experienced the co-creation between artist/cultural educator/cultural school teacher, educators and children and possibly researcher?

We have experienced a lot of great inspiration from all the artists. It has been great to be able to get such a broad input. It was a great collaboration, where our ongoing discussions after each workshop day have provided a lot of good pedagogical and artistic reflection.

We have also experienced that the artists have been happy with the process, and not least being able to collaborate as artists.

The energy between children and artists has been great, and it has given a lot of great inspiration back to the artists.

- How have children's perspectives been expressed/included?

The format has been simple, despite the many different kinds of artistic input. Something was shown to the children and then it was up to them to try out and play the way they wanted to. The result was the children's own version of Otto is a Rhino.

- Do children play different games and with different people than usual?

So far, we have mostly experienced that the children played with other children during the activities. But in principle, it was a shared game where everyone naturally played together. Whether this will mean anything in the long term in terms of who plays with whom, we probably won't find out, as the children will be starting school in a few weeks.

- How do pedagogical staff act differently than they did before PlayArt?

It's still too early to say, but we're experiencing a lot of new opportunities in terms of art and culture that we're excited to use in new activities.

- What has it been like to work with action learning?

They have given us great experience with new ways of collaborating across groups of children, educators and outsiders. It has given us a different way of working with projects, especially projects where there is a theme, but where we also want there to be open agendas.

- To the artist/cultural mediator/cultural school teacher, if present: What have you gained from participating in PlayArt?

It has been a very exciting process for the artists. In addition to good experience working with children and educators, it has provided very useful experience on how to collaborate on projects where art forms are mixed. And it has provided useful collaborative relationships between daycare centers and Vejle Music and Culture School, which will be tried on new occasions. The latter is very important in terms of strengthening the pedagogical work with art and culture.

- What are the pedagogical staff still/now curious about?

New ways of working with storytelling, drama, music and digital tools.

- How will you use art, culture and aesthetic processes in the further process?

We want to keep playing with the things we've learned. Partly to try it out as something we do in everyday life. And to see if we can use it in other contexts and in connection with other themes.

- What points for attention should we take forward?

That we don't turn the things we have learned into "fixed" games, but retain the exploratory and experimental nature of playing with art and culture.