Welcome to Arty Tales online – where the Incinerator Gallery comes to you.

From this month Laura, our Barking Spider Visual Theatre artist and storyteller invites you to join in this creative story and activity from the comfort and safety of your own home.

Please take a photo or video of your story and artwork and share it on Instagram, Facebook, or our Facebook Group. Use the hashtag #IncineratorGallery so everyone can share just as we do during the program at Incinerator Gallery.

The rosebud who wanted to travel

Download this story.

Storytelling using treasures from the garden

This workshop is about learning to see stories all around us, and creating stories using everyday objects like those found in the garden or at the park.

Go on a treasure hunt around your neighbourhood to collect items you’d like to work with. These will transform into the characters in your story, use them to inspire the kind of story you create.

The materials Laura worked with in the video are examples of what you could use to create stories. Laura encourages you to be flexible and playful when finding your own treasures outside to work with – you can use anything at all!

The natural materials Laura used:

• a rosebud
• a rose
• autumn leaves
• seed pods
• pampas grass (referred to as dandelion fairies in the video)

When you create your story, choose a main character, with a quest to fulfil and some help along the way. You can tell your story in the air—as Laura has in the video—or on the floor, or the grass outside, even in a sandpit.

You can use furniture in the house as your story settings. A couch can become a mountain, a saucepan half-filled with water a sea, a blanket over a table makes a cave. There is no end to the possibilities for what you can invent!

Perhaps you’d like to share the story you created with the people you live with, or maybe you’d like to tell it to your toys, or even your pet.

As always, there are no right and wrong ways to play, so have fun using this framework to explore creativity and imagination!