Tweet26-02-2011 om 00:01 by Sueli Brodin

The monkey who did not fancy bananas: Once upon a time, there was a monkey in the jungle. He was free and happy and jumped from tree to tree but he did not fancy bananas. One day, a wicked animal trapper arrived in the jungle and tried to lure him with a banana. The trick didn’t work because the monkey didn’t fancy bananas. But the trapper threw a net over the monkey and managed to catch him anyway. The monkey was put into a big cage and the cage was loaded on a hippy boat. The monkey was very frightened because his situation looked desperate. But then all of sudden came Mickey Mouse flying through the air. With its powerful laser eyes, he made the cage disappear and rescued the monkey from the hippy boat. And Mickey Mouse and the monkey flew away together, all the way to Disneyworld, in Florida. And they lived happily ever after.



This was one of the many fantasy shadow puppet stories conceived and performed on Wednesday evening by the pupils of the Freinet School De Pyramide in Heerlen in front of a packed audience of parents, friends and guests at the Patronaat Cultural Centre.



The shadow puppet theatre show was the result of two months of workshops under the guidance of an artistic team consisting of four international and regional artists, Martina Winkel (Austria), Wouter Gulikers (the Netherlands), Ananda Pujik (the Netherlands), and Andreas Pfaffenberger (Austria), in the framework of the VIA2018 School Project led by artistic director Airan Berg.



Airan Berg opened the evening by explaining that the VIA2018 School Project is a wide euroregional programme focusing on the promotion of creativity in education, which will take place this year in primary schools in Heerlen/Parkstad, Sittard-Geleen, Maastricht, Eupen, Aachen, Liège and surroundings.



The VIA2018 platform responsible for Maastricht’s bid to become European capital of culture in 2018 sees the School Project as a key initiative because by introducing today’s children to art and culture, it prepares them to become tomorrow’s partners and audience.

The project kicked off at the beginning of January with the AZC and Freinet Schools in Heerlen and was now ready to deliver its first presentation.



The children were visibly excited and eager to reveal all the puppets they had created and share all the stories they had invented.



Every shadow puppet show was the result of a team effort, with one pupil reading the story out loud, another one doing the sound effects and several children acting out the story by moving selfmade puppet figures behind a selfmade cardboard screen. The shadows were also projected on a larger screen for the audience.

The strength of the project, in the eyes of the artistic team, lied primarily in the creative and learning process that the children had gone through in order to put up a performance which involved a wide array of skills, such as the use of movements, sounds, oral expression, precision, concentration, coordination and even improvisation.



The children were aged from 4 to 12 and presented their stories in small groups, within their own class.

The titles written on the programme made me smile in anticipation: “Night adventure”, “The super cool heroes”, The archeologist and the eyeless girl” or “the seven star crazy hotel”.



I was also charmed by the diversity of the children’s names: Narjes, Artan, Darlo, Ashley, Jareth, Wassim, Iwana, Sherku, Bryan, Shanice, Satwan, Bleona, Besijan, Kuba, Loeh, Yentel, Sienna, Chelsea, Mykayla, Chimmy..



It was a moving and endearing experience to enter the children’s fantasy world through their stories. There was even a magical moment, when a frail little girl with a tiny voice became so engaged in her performance – she played several characters at the same time - that the entire audience fell completely silent and listened breathlessly until she finished speaking.







The evening ended in laughter and with mutual shows of gratitude between the pupils, the school staff and the VIA2018 artistic team.



As I left the room, feeling uplifted by the children’s liveliness and creative energy, I saw a young girl shaking Martina Winkel’s hand and overheard her saying in English: “I really enjoyed meeting you Martina.”



Links:

• News report by regional television channel L1 (in Dutch): VIA2018 School Project at the Freinet School De Pyramide in Heerlen : http://www.l1.nl/popups/mediaplayerpopup/_rp_comm_lsvideoId/1_4947655


• VIA2018 School Project on the Freinet School De Pyramide website: description and photographs


• PechaKucha presentation about the VIA2018 School Project by Airan Berg: Education and Creativity: Possibility? Necessity? Dream?


• VIA2018 School Project: first project Maastricht European Capital of Culture


• VIA2018 website


• History of Freinet Pedagogy

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