Anthropology of the discard

Fascinated by the wall of Value Village where conglomerates of objects hang in plastic bags for the standard price of $2.99, Ricketts outlines how she has collected these bags that are ‘bulging’ with compelling possible new narratives. This class outlines an interactive exhibition illuminating the saliency of objects as triggers for performative storytelling. We will examine artefacts as emblems of lives lived, and lives that refuse to be seen in isolation of each other.

Ricketts believes that stories have a very important place in our community and classrooms. Stories are so naturally conjured by artefacts and when we work from a conglomerate of objects opposed to just one, we begin to understand how our stories interconnect with others and how this reminds us of our connected humanity.

In this class we will generate and investigate systems to play with story and movement provoked from objects and further this to the development of characters, environments, situations and plotlines.

Jabberwocky to teach nouns, verbs, and adjectives

Using Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, we explore the nonsensical language embedded within a context to determine the placement of nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Through embodied playfulness the students will demonstrate their knowledge of these literary components via vocal choir and movement.

This can be extended to their own written story with nonsensical words that are used within the correct context and have their classmates decide their grammatical function.

You will ask your students to play with notions of worry and the size of worry. Through playful explorations both with sound writing and movement we become more familiar with our own inner monsters and with a simple drawing and charting exercise we begin to map out the means to manage our worries with simple, actionable goals. Basically, we deconstruct worries into manageable goals in an embodied and playful way.

Objectives:

• To offer both a personal strategy and a strategy that teachers can use alongside students
• To engage with our stresses/worries/tensions playfully
• To experience the power of play