3 years ago a few Welsh and South African artists met up in a zoom room. We “humanized” the zoom room with different talents, interests, questions and passions.
Out of this collaboration grew 2 projects, one a beautiful magic realism script and ours, 3 audio stories with a focus on breathing in English, Welsh, Zulu and Afrikaans.
In March 2023 some of us got to hug for the first time in person and present our work at a school in Cardiff, Wales as a research in development process.
At the school our group did not feel as if we achieved all that we could or wanted to, with factors such as the size of the group, age of the group, size of the room and one source for the audio playing a role. We also kept in mind that for our group, this was still a research in development as well. Can audio stories be successful received by children? Should visuals accompany the stories? Is it inclusive? Should it be intimate? Individual or communal listening?
August 2023 came and we presented our work at the ASSITEJ Cradle of Creativity in Johannesburg, South Africa. How wonderful to see each other again and once again be able to present our work, with some changes made from our previous experience. This time around it was as if the puzzle just seem to fit. We set up small tents in a cozy library room. Groups of children entered the tents, together, but each had a separate headphone. In the tents were some soft toys as fidgeters. Together, but also individually the children listened to the audio stories. Giddy laughs could be heard and with sparkly eyes many of them wanted to close the tents, removing the old adults to be together in their own tent world. Of course there were some debates around who has what colour headphone, where to sit and checking in with whispers: "are we listening to the same story?" Although they followed the stories individually it was wonderful to hear communal reactions of gasps, laughter, breathing and a few yawns at certain moments in the narrative. All the children were eager to fidget with the soft toys, even the older age group. It was as if the older age group received the stories best, really engaging, listening and actively relaxing. An interesting observation for us and a question about age groups for our audio project...
We look forward to see how this can develop furthermore!
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