PLAY, DRAMA, CO-CREATION, EDUCATION, STORYTELLING

Region: Middle
Municipality: Skive
By: Skive
Year: 2019
Artist: Poul E. Nielsen
DAILY OFFER: Lark's Nest

Tale of the Snows November 2019

By Rikke M. Jensen (educator in the Nature Group)

 

What have we learned?

 

The staff of the Nature Group

  • You don't always have to have a fixed framework around a project. There has to be some common starting point, but not an actual roadmap. You have to be able to sit on your hands and not necessarily have a plan and a product in your head. You have to dare to let the children decide the way - the children help to develop the project. It doesn't give a straight path where we know where it ends, but a crooked path where we don't know where it ends. The adults here show that what the children choose has validity.
  • It takes courage to participate in cultural activities. You have to draw, tell, try things out, etc. - and set an example for the children by daring to do so.
  • Instead of going on a course and learning something, you get much more out of acting together with the children and the artist.

 

Artists

  • You start somewhere and then it takes hold. You can't plan what it's going to end up being. Your senses have to be on when you start. You have to be present in the moment and then see where it takes you.
  • Nature is good for connecting to presence and the present. Moreover, this project has confirmed Poul as an artist that children can do much more than we adults dare to let them. As adults, we can learn a lot from children. Listen to the children. Be curious about the children. Poul has seen how much the children notice. They see things we adults wouldn't notice.
  • The "scenery" around the kids doesn't matter much - the kids don't care that it's raining. Their sensory apparatus is still switched on.
  • Focus on the way the story is told. The story of the King of the Oils and the dead ice holes and poverty (the Rakkerne) are harsh stories, but children can handle it if the story is served in a proper way and if there is also an opportunity to talk about it afterwards (ask questions).

 

 

 

The children

  • They have learned about the life that once was around Flyndersø (the rakes and poverty, the tale of the Oak King and the dead ice holes and the last wolf on the land).
  • They have learned about the life around Flyndersø today (nature; the trees, the wildlife, the plants, the water).
  • Learning about nature; the current in the water, learning about the animals (e.g. how the donkey communicates with its ears, the donkey should be fed with a flat hand, etc.). Also learning that we have to take care of nature and that nature gives us peace/quiet.
  • They have learned to tell from what they see.