Storytelling
‘Reimagine your world’ is this year’s theme for National Storytelling Week, 1 - 9 February 2025. This annual event is a joyful celebration of the power of sharing stories and this week in the Art Room, we drew inspiration from our own favourite tales.
Words and pictures have always gone hand in hand when it comes to stories. An illustration can set the scene for an epic adventure or a comical tale. It can bring a character to life in glorious technicolour or help us tune into the finer details of a narrative. Images can make our understanding clearer or help us communicate many things we sometimes cannot find the words to explain.
Full of secret places, interesting lives and wonderful possibilities, the stories we encounter in the world around us help us to relax and escape into the realms of our imagination.
Our preschool class shared the story Elmer by David McKee, the colourful patchwork Elephant who longed to look the same as the many grey elephants in his herd. To celebrate the theme of difference and the uniquely colourful patterns that are displayed throughout the story book, each child decorated their very own Elmer artwork with paint, pen, crayon and collage. Observing the different patchwork sections drawn upon their elephant templates required masses of concentration from the children and we were so impressed by the care and determination that was apparent around the table in achieving their goal, even from our very smallest artists.
In our Afterschool classes, the children brought their own favourite books into the Art Room to share with each other and used them as springboards to create artworks that were special to each of them: favourite characters were illustrated and set into newly imagined landscapes and alternative cover designs were drawn up to bring their favoured stories, recollections and daydreams to life through their own eyes. It’s always exciting to see the variety of pieces that are dreamt up by our young artists each week. But it is the enormous sense of achievement that can follow as individual ideas takes shape and self-expression is realised that makes creative time so special and rewarding for all involved.
