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Hospital D Day 5 | Puppet Portal Project - hospital D
2009-05-27

Hospital D Day 5

Today was very much inspired by our artist`s meeting - we came together on Saturday to share the process-to-date, ideas , thoughts.One of the major outcomes for me was to focus on play rather than on the making of a film with a linear narrative/ to remember that the project is about puppetry /art and technology- as a means of communication- so not neccessarily about making a film. To further develop ideas of how to facilitate the( live) link up between hospitals, we decided that each artist would make a puppet and, together with the children, create it`s character and then post it to another hospital, across the country.

I made a very neutral puppet , brought it in half-finished, and told the children-aged 5 to 14- that it would travel- The children decided it was a girl named Ruby and one girl took on to dress her, give her eyes, mouth and hair whilst the others made friends for Ruby. Had lots of help by the teacher assistants, as well two nurses were there off and on. They seamed to enjoy the puppet making, from an observant perspective, but still...!

Went on a live link up with Sligo and Limerick- the timing wasn`t perfect , but it was nice to hear Helene and some of Limerick`s puppets waved hello to us through the computer, so did the puppets here, peeking through a preset frame .

The girl who had worked on the travelling puppet Ruby and two other children had left, and new ones had come in- one boy made a very quick paper puppet, one (10 yr old) girl was offered by a teenage girl to help her finishing off her puppet . And the last took on performing Ruby.

Despite some difficulties of engaging all age groups equally sometimes, I am mostly amazed to see how all children get on , look after each other, help each other .

We had not made up a story so just filmed some meetings of Ruby and the other puppets-quite a few of them looked quite glam (well i had brought in blue sequence material, think that s were it came from..) and it all ended with a big disco. Teachers got involved turning on the radio, picking up puppets.

Today there was one little girl who enjoyed the making but got distracted easily. She really needed one to one attention, we made a house from stones for her puppet and she was more interested in the stones, their temperature on her skin, the sound they made on the table. She was amazed with the Vado on avery simple level: reproducing sounds (she held it to her ear like a mobile and did not bother with the images). all the linking up was far to complicated for her, to understand whats going on there..

Only two girls were there in the afternoon, one uploaded images onto Ait Eile but then left for visitors,the other stayed and wrote sth for our interactive book (which has not been used though while I was away ..).

Will try to edit not too much as this is my new mission! To leave more space for play and fun.

Sometimes find myself distracted trying to run the workshop and facilitate all the different responsibilities this covers and , at the same time, to document visually what s going on, so I find I m ending up with rather "stiff" photographical images. Ideas welcome!!