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PPP Earth Day 17 | Puppet Portal Project - hospital D
2009-11-12

PPP Earth Day 17

Theme of the day was EARTH.

I did not work directly with children in my hospital - ( the schoolroom is still not in use / teachers work on the wards- all precautionary measures re H1N1) . Still I prepared an earthy place on a table in the deserted classroom & to "Earth"puppets & linked up with two other hospitals .

LINKING UP

I linked up with dragons from the land of FIRE and with a cloud and creatures from the realm of AIR- both were very playful and full of play, spontanious tasks, stories, surprisess and poetical encounters. I must admit i had lots of fun- despite the absence of children on my side . Being on my own I tried to support & respond to the other children �s stories and ideas and let them steer the nature of the Link up . Which was not easy as they kept me busy! Link ups featured many different ways of "cross-elemental" communication and collaboration between the different lands, things that were lost in one land had to be found in the other, anything from objects to weather travelled from land- to land-.The outcomes of two recent creative exchange meetings of all artists- one of them being an actual Ait Eile Link up exploring and playing with interaction & between the windows- became tangible!

STORIES

There were short-legged twin dragons both named Rosie who had temporarily lost the ability to breath fire (later though magically regained it and lit Pebble�s firewood on Earthland), there were searches for nintendos, polarbears and silver horns and a dance in fireland to music from earth. There were chats on bathing in clouds or mudpuddles, a green kite who flew from the realm of Air to Earth and gifts of goggles and towels.

One of the Link ups- Earth meeting Air- is beautifully described on Siobhan�s blog ( Hospital C Day 17).

Together with a teacher and an assistant, we also were unseen audience of an online-show the creatures of AIR (hospital C) had earlier performed for and audience of staff on the same hospitals ward.

PUPPET MAKING ON THE WARDS

The exceptional situation of not being able to work with the children in a shared space has brought about the necessity to increase accessibility of the project to the children on the wards and in isolation as well as provided me with the time to develop and create something to meet this need. Which is positive in a way as reaching the children on the wards more has been an endeavour of mine for a while.

I had prepared some samples of "Puppet-making-kits", all individually packed (to work in line with measures against H1N1 spreading) with a printed leaflet which described how to make a simple puppet from the bags� ingredients. To distinguish these from commercial puppet making kits some of the materials are found natural objects (acorns, tiny branches) and carefully selected bits of special fabric( alongside more conventional craft materials like feathers, model-magic, wooden pegs). One of the teachers took them up to the wards, and later reported children had loved it - though one had preferred to make a boat from the bag s contents and started telling a story from there. I was happy to hear that as I had been concerned that the creative freedom which we try to maintain throughout the project would be cropped by offering this "instant puppets"- which is not the case. So I spend the afternoon making many more sets which the teachers will be free to use- both with the children they teach or to distribute among other children.

I am excited to see where this will go, and would like to create a way to link the making-activity to the collaborative "Elements" project- for example by including postcards into the puppet-making-kits, with maybe an image of the four elements on front and space at the back on which the children can draw or write their puppets experience in one of the lands.

Suggestions welcome!