The building blocks of imagination
Celebrating creativity in children is a serious business for artists, writes Celine Naughton
AT first sight it’s just a pile of oversized blue foam building blocks, but add a bunch of enthusiastic young children to the mix and watch the magic happen.
Marc Mac Lochlainn, co-founder of Branar Children’s Theatre in Galway, will be doing just that when “Bricí Spraoi” are used to turn Galway’s Ballybane Library into an Imagination Playground for 3 to 11-year-olds.
The brains behind three major events at Cruinniú na nÓg in Galway, Marc explains that the problem with traditional playgrounds is that the children end up playing on things created by somebody else.
“With Bricí Spraoi, kids can use different shapes to build anything they like – castles, rockets, trains or whatever their imagination conjures up,” he says. “Because the blocks are all the same blue, this poses a further challenge not to just make the same thing as someone else in different colours, but to get really creative with the construction itself.”
Invented by an American architect in response to a local playground that had been vandalised, Marc introduced the blocks to Ireland a year ago. Having seen them in action in schools and at festivals over the past year, he’s seen a pattern of children collaborating with each other, often with spectacular results. With up to 20 children at a time playing with over 100 blocks, it quickly becomes a communal effort.
“We might start them off by showing them how to build a castle, but once they see the potential, they start to explore endless possibilities and before you know it, they’re making submarines, helicopters, spaceships and rollercoasters,” says Marc. “They interact with other kids, and they start to appreciate the benefits of working together because they see how they can make something bigger and better than they could on their own.”
The blocks come in a variety of shapes – squares, channels, chutes, balls and connectors - which enable children to have hours of fun, and parents and guardians are encouraged to get involved and build too.
“In a school setting, they can be used to link in with other subjects, like history or geography, for instance, to get children engaged in creating the likeness of a particular historic building or geographical feature,” says Marc.
Also in Ballybane, a puppet show adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ story, ‘How to Catch a Star’ will be followed by puppetry workshops for children from seven years. The children will be shown how to manipulate the wooden puppets, and then they can use them to tell their own stories.
It’s a great chance to catch the show before it hits the South Bank Centre in London later this year, and then it goes on a tour of China, as well as Ireland.
“We make shows for children down the road, but it’s an international level of performance,” says Marc. “Creativity is universal, and it’s great to see the same reaction from children in Shanghai or Macau as in downtown Galway.”
Ensuring that even babies have equal access to arts and culture, Ballinasloe library will host two performances of ‘The Shape of Things’ – one for tots from 6 months to 3 years, and another for children with special needs up to the age of 11. Designed originally with infants in mind, it soon became clear that children on the autistic spectrum and those with other special needs also engaged with the production.
“It’s set in a magical world inside a padded tent, with a padded floor and a canopy roof,” says Marc. “Various items are hung from the ceiling, so if a baby wants to lie on his back, there’s plenty of interesting stuff to look at, and the spongy floor is great for crawling on.
“These children are at an age where they want to explore their tactile and other senses. They experience the show through hearing the music and language, touching things, and interacting with the performers. The story is about two different shapes, Cubert the cube and Triantán the triangle, who are both trying to fit in and find their place in the world.
“The second performance is the same story, but it will be even more relaxed, to cater specifically to the needs of autistic children and those with special needs. They can touch things, feel them and watch them move. I remember a blind boy who smiled and laughed throughout the show as he listened to the story unfold.”
Cruinniú na nÓg may sound like a national day of fun and games, but there’s a lot more to it than that, according to Marc, who believes that celebrating and cultivating creativity in the nation’s children is a serious business.
“The day itself highlights the amount of activity that could be available for children all year round,” he says. “It shows the massive work that is going on but is largely unseen, and it creates awareness locally of the number of people in our communities who are dedicated to unlocking the creativity in children.
“The Creative Schools programme is a fantastic opportunity to equip our children for a very different future from our own. Creativity is a tool that will teach them how to use their imagination to solve problems. We’re currently education children in skills developed for the industrial revolution. In fact, most of the jobs the next generation will be doing haven’t yet been invented. Can you imagine 10 years ago telling your parents you wanted to be an app developer? They wouldn’t have known what you were talking about, yet that’s now a multi-billion euro industry. Our children need to be able to use their creativity to adapt to a rapidly changing and uncertain world.”
Challenge
Even though he’s been connecting children with the arts for over 24 years, drummer, theatre maker and festival director Brian Fleming never ceases to be moved by the difference it brings to their lives.
On the day we speak, the Dublin-based artist delivered a workshop on bodhrån-playing to a group of disadvantaged kids in the city.
“Concentration was a challenge,” he says. “At the end of the session, the youth workers told me that getting the children to concentrate on one subject for an hour-and-a-half was a huge achievement. I was struck by how kind they were to each other, and supportive in making music together.
“Percussion requires a different type of intelligence than other subjects on the school curriculum. Kids who might not excel in other areas often come to the top.
“I’ll never forget one girl who was forever getting into trouble at school, and most days was called to the principal’s office because she’d been bold. However, she knew how to hold a beat, and went from being the bold girl to being the leader in the drumming class I taught. When the class put on a concert at the National Concert Hall, the principal cried throughout her performance.”
In 2012, Brian visited Rwanda with a group called Clowns Without Borders. While sceptical at first about the benefits of bringing a circus to refugee camps filled with children scarred by war, he was soon converted.
“For many children, this was the first time they had laughed in years,” he says. “It was a clear example of creativity building resilience. They really engaged with the performance, which brought joy where there had been so much sorrow.
“Whether at home or abroad, children of all ages are enriched by developing their creativity. Music can help develop hard skills like learning to play an instrument, but it’s also profoundly influential in cultivating those all-important ‘soft skills’ like collaboration, communication and self-confidence. Being creative teaches children how to think outside the box, which is such a valued skill in big software companies today.”
He remembers the first workshop he gave in 1994 to a group of kids considered to be at risk of becoming young offenders.
“For the first 20 minutes they wouldn’t even pick up a drum, and then they insisted on having a smoke break,” he says. “I thought it was a disaster, but Niall O’Baoill, one of the pioneers of participatory arts, assured me that for these children, some of whom had been abused, to have stayed in one room for 20 minutes was a big achievement. It’s these little victories that make you see how the arts connect with children in a very personal and profound way.”
Through an initiative run by Dublin’s Culture Connects, Brian teaches percussion to students in the Holy Family School for the Deaf.
“They absolutely love music,” he says. “Deafness has many forms. Some of the students have partial hearing, while others feel the rhythm through the floor. They have their own deaf choir, who sign instead of sing. It’s an amazing thing to experience.
“When they go on stage and get into the moment, as any musician or singer knows, they become completely focused, and get the buzz of being part of a group creating something together. Recently at a performance in Collins Barracks, they were joined by the Forever Young Chorus of older people who sang, while the deaf students signed. It was empowering and fun for them, and a great day out for the audience who knew they were witnessing something very special.”
Brian is working with Dublin’s Culture Connects on the ‘Pow Wow in the Park’ event in Lucan on June 23rd. Children will have a chance to learn how to play stickball from native American Chicksaw tribesmen, circus skills from Dublin Circus Project, and learn African drumming with David Day. Schools in the Cabra and Finglas areas will be having workshops on these skills in the run-up to Cruinniú na nÓg.
These children are at an age where they want to explore their tactile and other senses.
They experience the show through interacting