TEXT-TILES
Grays Farm's Workshops
Storytelling and Screen Printing, Spring, 1999
WITH THE STORYTELLER
Day 1
(Picture: Year 5, Grays Farm School, Bromley)
Year 5, Grays Farm School, Bromley meet The Storyteller
(Picture: The Storyteller and Year 5)
After break we looked at the Text-Tiles Web Site, we saw some flags with a dragon with loads of heads, a bird with two heads, some crabs and some monkeys...'look before you leap'.
(Picture: Year 5 working in pairs making up stories) After this we made up some stories and we had to speak what came through our heads.
In the hall we spoke through our heads and acted out what went through our heads, then we had to act out the animals to different sounds. Then we got into groups of 4 and 5 and created our own group monster. We had to make a sound to go with it and we had to make a movement.
(Picture: Year 5 in hall)(Picture: Year 5 in hall) Some of us made different shapes and noises... swirling, giggling squeaking 'sort of like dancing really' ..and we had loads of fun!"
In the afternoon we got down to the serious business of writing our stories. In our groups we began by drawing a picture of the monster we had made up in the hall before lunch. We were given 4 minutes to complete our drawing, then we had to give it a name. We then had brainstorms where we had to shout out words that we thought described Africa, we made a list... these words were for us to use in our stories.
Next we had to write our story, Xanthe talked about stories and how we set scenes and make adventures happen. So we started by each making up a character and giving it a name, next we had to put our characters in a scene... each group had to try and agree without arguing too much. The characters had to come across a problem and then sort it out. Each story had our monster in it too. We only had about 20 minutes to write the first version of the story. Then we had to read them out in class and people listened and clapped.
At the end of the day Tony did a screen print of a monkey using two colour prints. It was brilliant. Now we knew how our books were going to be made.
THE SCREEN PRINTING WORKSHOPS
By the time tony came back we had worked a lot on our stories in class. We had to keep on rewriting it until it got clearer and we added words that helped descriptions. We went on the Internet and joined the Text-Tiles classroom on the Website so that we could send some of our stories to Jacqui to put on the Website and to talk to Tony and Xanthe about what we thought of the day they came in.
We then made illustrations for our books and designed the title page. Because they were going to be screen printed we had to cut out our pictures.
Day 2
Each group printed their book on a long piece of cloth, we left spaces for the words. When we printed our pictures we used lots of different colours and printed twice on each picture. Sometimes we painted the inks on the pages before printing, we also used some screens with textures. Our Head Teacher, Mr Miller, helped us print with Mrs Desnos the arts co-ordinator. Our pictures looked great when they were screen printed.
Day 3
We had to make sure our stories were laid out properly on the computer. We then photocopied the text A3 size. Next we mono-printed onto our books using acetate and plastic.
First we painted on the plastic, we used our fingers and the wrong end of a paintbrush to make patterns then we put them face down on the cloth and rollered over the backs. When we peeled them off they left lots of swirling patterns.
We then took the text of our stories and made sure they fitted on the pages. We rubbed vegetable oil on the words and the paper went transparent. We painted PVA glue all over the book and stuck on our story.
You could see the swirly paterns in the background under the words and our banner books were finished.
When they were dry we held them up and our teacher took photos of them. He said they were 'totally awesome'.
Link to Pilot Project description page