Watch this space – anything might happen!

(and it probably will)

CI is calling kids from Castlemaine, and soon, from around the world, to contribute to an exciting global project: Small Stories for a Big World.

We’re inviting you to create a story together by sending us snapshots, images, photos and drawing pictures of the special place where you live. Send us your images, experiences and discoveries.

We thought we could start by writing about each season, starting with autumn.

Small stories - gathering the seeds. Story seeds are small images or experiences that become the seeds of the story. We will gather the seeds together and then plant them to see what grows. Story seeds might include: What you saw. What you heard. What you felt. What you smelt. What you sensed. What you wondered. What you imagined. An idea or thought about nature or the environment (your own, not someone else’s). A discovery. What you did or what happened (not the whole story of what happened but the germ of it). Particular place. A story seed might be a photo or a drawing or a short video instead of words.

For the first month of autumn look at what’s happening around you. See if you notice the changes in the trees or the animals. Do different things grow? What is happening to the leaves?

Write down, collect, photograph, film, record or draw your experiences of autumn and send them in to CI. They can be a snippet – a few lines, one picture, anything! Your experiences, what you see, hear, wonder will  become the seeds of our Autumn Story.

We will write the first part of the story from the seeds you send us. We will plant the seeds in our imagination and see what grows. Then we’ll share the ‘seedling story’ with you and you tell us what you think might happen, what you are curious about in the emerging story. This will happen once or twice until our final story emerges.

This is similar to a community garden – only it is a community story

Pic: Matt Wobbly

It’s sharing our imaginations about nature and the environment we live in.

And eventually, we hope to go global! We’re already talking to a school in Ireland, and we’ll be comparing and eventually maybe even mixing our stories.

Gathering the seeds

You are invited to send us images, experiences or discoveries of the place you live, to andrew@castlemaineindependent.org

Only scanned artwork can be accepted.

Sorting the seeds

We’ll collect the seeds and sort the seeds into piles to consider what are the main themes and how we might plant them.

Planting the seeds

The writers will plant the images and ideas in their imaginations and hold the space for the story to germinate.

Cultivating the imagination

The story maker (a writer working with Castlemaine Independent) will hold the seeds in sacred space of the imagination, apply his or her curiosity, and wait for germination. Your contributions will water and fertilise the author’s mind to see what emerges. (No, we dont weed! There are no weeds in the garden of imagination. No weeds in nature’s garden.)

Unfurling and curiosity

We all love a story. Story is the most ancient way of understanding the experience of another. Empathy grows through sharing stories and community is built in shared stories. We are losing our personal, family and community stories as we are offered more commercial stories. Intergenerational shared stories have been usurped by Disney and story time is now given over to television. The heart of who we are and our place in the world is held in the ordinary stories of our lives. To foster this reminds us that we belong to a place that is unique on the planet and part a global family. It is one thing to hear a story; it is another to grow our own story. Learning to tell, give voice to our unique story can give us a sense of hope and a way through even the darkest experiences. To create a shared story is to find belonging and grow social fibres that carry meaning and hope in a community. Traditionally grandparents and elders were the keeper of stories for the tribe. One of the most deeply loving and unconditional relationships we can find anywhere is the one between grandparent and their grandchildren. To hear another’s story is to know them as a friend. The big picture is to share local and child-created (small) stories among children across the globe (big world). (Pic: Matt Wobbly)

The writer approaches the emergent seedlings with curiosity, discovers what is emerging and finds the words to help it grow and blossom.

Letting it out

The emerging story - the first little plants - are shared with those who offered the seeds of ideas. Their curiosity lets them see what these seedlings might become and they share their ideas.

More fertilising

The next layer of ideas become the structures that direct the story and fertilise or help the emerging themes grow. The writer will prune what has not grown, and fertilise and create support structures for parts of the story that are flourishing.

And then the final story is revealed and plucked and consumed with glee.

Small Stories for a Big World

This is a project conceived by Daylesford psychologist and writer Rita McInnes. She is passionately interested in young people, about their place in the world, and in our mental health as a society.

For Rita’s contributions to Castlemaine Independent, click here, (and at the bottom of the page are links to more of her work).

The uniqueness of place

Rita McInnes writes:

We are interested in drawing out the uniqueness of place for kids, taking attention away from technology and particularly ‘global’ culture. The place, environment they live in and also the unique culture they live in.

The loss of our personal, family and community stories seriously affects mental wellbeing. Continually having outside stories, such as American stories, imposed on the individual and collective psyche means that we become passive.

Once upon a time the elders (Griots) carried the family and tribal stories in their hearts and minds and shared them with the children to provide the collective wisdom of the tribe and ways of being in the world according to shared beliefs. Now stories are synthetically produced in Hollywood and the organic process of change is inhibited, or even dead.

Old media are caught in the same old stories because we have lost our individual and collective capacity to re-write our stories, and our mythology.

Small Stories for a Big World is about developing community through the process of growing a shared story that emerges from the seeds of ideas that children discover. Building global community as stories are shared across the globe highlights the uniqueness of place andan awareness of the world as a global village with kids “just like us,” the same and different.

Ancient wisdom and now neuroscience suggest that happiness and good mental health exist in the present, in a state of mindfulness. Yet increasingly we are distracted and unaware of our environment. Asking children to tune in to their environment and notice what is happening around them is an invitation to mindful awareness generally and their own environment in particular.

You are invited to send us images, experiences or discoveries of the place you live, to andrew@castlemaineindependent.org

Only scanned artwork can be accepted.

Examples

1.  Walking I felt the hot sun on my back then the cool of the shade. Hot-cool, cool-hot walking. I felt a sticky tickle on my face and arms when I walked through a spider web. I heard a noise and looked up at a tree. A koala was watching me with his dark eyes. His big furry round ears stuck out listening to me. I waved but he didn’t wave back.

2.  I heard the cockatoos screeching. The day was hot. I went for a swim then ate a big piece of pink watermelon that trickled down my cossie. I wondered where the cockatoos go when they aren’t screeching.

3.

4. Yesterday I saw a black wallaby. She didn’t see me because I stood like a statue near a tree. I watched her eating grass. She nibbled at the juiciest bits of grass. Her tail swished and curled like a thick black snake with furry skin. Then I move and she looked right at me. We both stood frozen, surprised watching each other. Then she turned and thumped off through the trees. I wondered where her friends and family were.

6.

5. Tall trees. Eucalypt smell. Sun big. Hot back. Fast bike. Rough track. Red shirt. Fat kookaburra laughing at me. Why is he laughing?