Story, Children and the Arts

What was your favorite story as a child? What kinds of narrative adventures did you create through role-play, dance, music, painting, dressing up, puppetry? This subject examines how children engage in story and storytelling through the arts. It focuses on how artful, imaginative, and narrative experiences enrich and expand personal and social awareness, and connectedness. Students will explore story making and storytelling as expressive modes of communication and meaning making across a range of art forms, linked to theory. In practice-based arts workshops, they will investigate ways to create and make stories. Students will work individually and in groups to critique, compose, co-create and present stories suitable for young audiences drawing on a variety of multimodal texts such as: artworks, cultural artefacts, interactive picture books, film music, digital stories, scriptwriting, graphic novels, animation, theatre, dance, and zines. This subject is suitable for students with little formal arts or writing background.