?Enchanted? is Aberdeen City Council?s annual storytelling and theatre festival for children, young people and their families, writes Jacqueline McKay.
The festival is programmed and promoted by Aberdeen City Council?s Arts Education Unit. Now in its fourth year, it follows the highly successful format of a six-week long celebration of storytelling and theatre, designed to engage Aberdeen nurseries, schools, community and family groups in the magical experience of storytelling through the arts.
The 2002 festival held over six weeks in February and March, was devised around Maurice Sendak?s wonderful children?s book ?Where the Wild Things are?, with the special permission of the author. The festival featured a range of storytellers working with families, nursery and schools groups and we asked our national orchestras to work with children creating soundscapes for storytelling. Storytelling training was also high on the programme?s agenda, and teachers and parents attended daytime and evening storytelling training sessions to learn new ways of teaching and communicating with the children in their care. As a new mum, I too went along and had great fun making up scenarios and learning action stories for wee ones with the help of professional storytellers. The training sessions were carefully designed to make you feel at ease, build up your confidence and give your imagination a powerful battery charge to meet your child?s storytelling demands. All the events are free to participants including the training sessions.
Enchanted also had a few festival firsts for 2002. Maurice Sendak gave us his permission to commission a new theatre performance for three to six year olds based on ?Where the Wild Things are?. In partnership with the Lemon Tree Arts Centre in Aberdeen, the Visible Fictions Theatre Company were commissioned to rework the book with the help of a Scottish Arts Council award and created a stunning new children?s show called ?Wild Things!? about a mischievous little boy called Max who gets up to all sorts of exciting adventures in his wolf suit, and who befriends lots of monsters on the way! We commissioned two visual artists in residence to work with the nurseries and primary school groups in advance of the performances to create all sorts of wonderful wild things and wee beasties to bring along with them to interact with the performers.
Storytelling is experiencing a renaissance in Scotland, mainly as a result of the work of the Scottish National Storytelling in Edinburgh, our own initiatives in Aberdeen and at last new funding opportunities to support and invest in storytelling and training in Scotland recently announced by the Scottish Arts Council. So if you haven?t already discovered ?the gift of the gab?, now?s the time! Enchanted has certainly created an overwhelming demand for storytelling in Aberdeen, and storytelling can be found on year-round menus of our cultural organisations in the city.
Jacqueline McKay is Principal Officer, Arts Education at Aberdeen City Council.
t: 01224 346029; f: 01224 346288;
e: jmckay@education.aberdeen.net.uk