Children's Drawing Workshop
As I have been exploring the idea of storytelling as an architectural concept these recent weeks, I felt I needed to gain a deeper understanding of how to translate a world of fiction and imagination where anything and everything is possible into an existing space with limits and boundaries.
When it comes to the imaginary, I think it's most likely that no one can do it better than children. Kids see the real world through the lens of imagination, their creativity is sometimes even beyond anything a creative adult mind could conceive.
As a result, I decided to contact a school teacher from my home country, kindly asking whether it would be possible for a class of young students to participate in a drawing workshop related to my university project. Mrs Alexandra was incredibly kind and agreed to lead the workshop herself, given the fact that I couldn't be there in person to do it myself.
As I discussed with her, she gave the students (aged 6-7) the task of drawing what the "World of Stories" would look like if it was contained within the building. Quite a challenging task! Mrs Alexandra also gave them a couple of ideas of what they could include in their drawing (I mentioned these to her earlier when we discussed what I am aiming to design): a stage, a bookshelf, seating, windows, doors, objects hanging from the ceiling. She instructed them to think about what is on the walls, on the ceiling and even what they imagine it smells like in the world of stories.
The children were enthusiastic, and they created amazing drawings! Some of them were a huge surprise through their creative approach, while others seemed to be more confined to what the "standard building" looks like. You can see below a couple of my favourites:
What was most surprising was the fact that almost none of the children drew any imaginary characters inhabiting this space of stories (...which was a little bit disappointing), but they seemed to imagine it would be a place where children like themselves would go there and listen to stories or watch performances - and that is exactly the aim of the Storyhouse.
Also, some of the stages they created seemed to replicate the traditional red-curtained stage design, which I believe was inspired by the one the students saw on their first school trip to the Opera a week earlier. However, there are a couple of drawings bringing a fresh twist to that idea of the standard stage.
After analysing these drawings a couple of times, I have come to the conclusion that I have an incredibly valuable package of fresh and creative ideas that I can use as inspiration and/or apply in my design proposal for the Storyhouse. None of the drawings provide a complete design solution to fit the building at 30-34 Vittoria Street, but that wasn't the aim of the workshop in the first place. It has been amazing to see how children approach a difficult creative challenge like this one, and to explore their wonderful ideas!
In the next stage, I am going to rethink some of the children's ideas and produce my own sketches exploring how they could be applied to the building at 30-34 Vittoria Street. I will write a report about this soon, so keep your eyes open for a new post soon!
