Puppet masters

Back in 2006, Manchester Art Gallery started work on a project in partnership with Manchester Library Service’s Reading Voyager. The Reading Voyager is a mobile library that takes books and activities directly to children. Its schedule includes regular visits to a variety of groups including mainstream and special schools, travellers’ sites and looked after children’s centres. The first project included the development of a board game called ‘The Chariots of Doom’, inspired by Alexander Wagner’s ‘Chariot Race’, a painting in Manchester Art Gallery’s collection. Children now regularly play Chariots of Doom on the Reading Voyager, and at family events at the gallery.

This led to the desire for further collaboration. The gallery and library services have just completed a second phase of this partnership which has resulted in the creation of a storytelling puppet theatre. In the second project, Manchester Art Gallery and the Library Service worked with 11 pupils aged 6–8 from Ewing School to create a resource suitable for children from special schools. Ewing School is the only school in Manchester catering exclusively for pupils experiencing speech and language disorders who require special school provision. The remit of the project was to produce a high quality resource that, similar to The Chariots of Doom, could be used on the Voyager bus and would help bring alive the joy of storytelling and reading to children across the city. The project was also seen as an opportunity to widen access to Manchester Art Gallery’s collection and to raise awareness of the Reading Voyager within the community.

Even before the project started, the school was working on a storytelling project. Once the gallery and library services got involved, visual artist Katy McCall was invited to facilitate workshops at the school and at the gallery. Katy worked with pupils to explore ideas for stories and developing narrative, using artworks and objects at Manchester Art Gallery for inspiration. The children came up with creative ideas that led to the development of the puppet theatre. They chose their favourite people from paintings at the gallery and turned them into puppets. They also drew and painted backdrops for the theatre, including a seaside scene, a spacescape and even a football ground. Finally, the children selected objects from the gallery’s craft and design displays to use as props and prompts for storylines. The children’s artwork and ideas have now been turned into a portable puppet theatre that comprises a display board, backdrops, puppets, a bag of props, prompt sheets with questions that help develop storylines and characters, and images of the original artworks that inspired the puppets.

The partnership has brought advantages for both organisations. Galleries and library services are already trying to reach similar audiences, and the sharing of resources and staff expertise has enabled this to happen more easily and with greater impact. With some creative thinking, it’s not been too difficult to make thematic links between book and art collections. For example, the Chariots of Doom game links well with the curriculum and to books about Roman history, while the new puppet theatre sparks discussions on all kinds of stories. The involvement of children with special needs has resulted in a flexible resource and children can take the lead in how it is used. By using visual arts to tell stories, children who have difficulties with the spoken and written word can gain access to whole other worlds.