Continuing the zombie theme, last weekend I ran a workshop along with professional storyteller and performer Lindsey Warnes Carroll. The workshop was for the Everybody's Reading Festival 2013, which ran for a week in Leicester. We were lucky enough to be hosted by the
Curve Theatre in the city centre who sold every single ticket.
The theme was 'Adventures in Zombieland' and children were invited to come and make their own three-dimensional monstrous characters from recycled textiles and create stories inspired by their own favorite scary books.
The session started off with a monster story followed by another true story, to spark imagination and told by special guests Zombie Lindsey and Zombie Lisa...
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
and a spot of monster moshing to get the adrenaline flowing for the creative making...
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
The creative making started with a quick tutorial on how to thread a needle, sew and make decisions about how your monster/zombie may look. Although the body shape was precut, participants were encouraged to 'freestyle' by cutting shapes from recycled felt jumpers for noses, eyes, mouth etc. I love the work of talented graffiti style artist
Jon Burgerman and the body shape, eyes and noses were influenced by his work
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 | |
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
It was so lovely to see parent and child working together on their creations as a team. Both Lindsey and myself feel that children and their grown-ups love to be creative together and we encourage a team approach towards making their creations thereby sharing the experience for long after the workshop has ended...
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
The room was calm and quiet with concentration centred on making those little stitches and bringing the characters to life...
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
We had a joke bell. The children entertained us by selecting and reading out monster and zombie jokes...
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
Stuffing the characters always seems to be the most popular part of workshops like these. The characters start to come to life at this stage...
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
Suddenly the characters came alive and were lovingly accepted into the world of the children's imagination...
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| Image Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
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| Image by Trudy Cleaver (c) 2013 |
And at the end, lots of zombies and monsters came together for some final character sharing and storytelling. We had monsters who love icecream and pizza and zombies who were inspired by characters from favorite books...
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| Image by Alanta Lee (c) 2013 |
Every family left with information sheets to develop their story for their character further as well as a recipe for monster cookies. Long may the adventures in zombieland continue in the imaginations of all the children and their grown ups who came to this session. We had so much fun!
Lindsey and Lisa are available for private events/parties. If you would like to have your own storytelling stitchy adventure, please contact us via the main website:
Little Bird School of Stitchcraft
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