Like many arts professionals, I have tried over the years to bend my ideas to fit the criteria of funding bodies, says Pippa Smith. This one was different ? it was created in response to a specific Arts Council of England (ACE) initiative. ACE had created the Atlas Fund, a pot of money which was to be used for projects involving IT and the under fives. Simultaneously, the Director of the Brighton Festival at that time had asked his staff to come up with ideas on a Japanese theme.
As Ed Berman, the founder of Interaction, is reported to have said, ?They want you to jump through so many hoops it might be more profitable to organise a sponsored hoop jump.?
I trawled the Internet idly, visiting old favourites like the National Curriculum, and some new sites which took me into the far reaches of Japanese culture. Some where along the line I discovered Kami Shibai. The words translate literally as ?Paper Theatres? and the delightful story surrounding them goes like this: In 17th century Japan candy merchants travelled to remote villages on three-wheeled bicycles pulling a little wooden theatre. When they stopped they would clash two bamboo sticks together and the children would run out of their houses to buy sweets and see the play. Those with cash got in the front row but anyone could stand at the back and hear the story. The tales were cliff-hangers, pre- TV soaps, so they had to wait for the next visit to hear the sequel. The clever bit was that the pictures which illustrated the story were slotted into the theatre in sequence. The children would see the pictures one at a time as they were moved from the front to the back of the theatre. The story lines were written on the back of the picture preceding the one that the children were looking at so that the storyteller was able to read the words which matched the front picture.
We then had the big breakthrough. Revisiting the National Curriculum we discovered that two of the IT concepts to be grasped by the youngest children are mouse control and sequencing. Our hoops were suddenly in place and the jumping began!
Armed only with scribbles on card and a lot of enthusiasm I approached Brighton University?s graphic design and IT departments. They wholeheartedly embraced the project as one which would give their students scope to work on something which would have a pay-off in the real world. The result was an embarrassment of riches ? 20 keen students pitching for the job of creating stories which would be taken around Brighton nursery schools during the Festival by a real storyteller (sadly in a car though we would have loved a bike), and which could be left behind on our Internet site for the children to visit and sequence themselves, controlling the mouse, once the storyteller had gone.
The three chosen stories were contemporary, imaginatively written and superbly illustrated. One helped its author/illustrator to gain a place at the Royal College of Art, another was submitted for a prestigious book award, and our student web designer is now working for himself. ACE came up trumps, everybody got paid and several hundred very young children had a festive classroom experience.
To see the Kami Shibai visit the Brighton Festival website, as we have kept it on by popular demand. Our storyteller, Sian Jones, is also now visiting the schools who missed out during the Festival.
Pippa Smith is Education Manager of Brighton Dome and Festival. t: 01273 260820; e: pippa.smith@brightondome.org.uk; w: http://www.brightonfestival.org.uk