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Day 9 - Lapland - Hospital F | Puppet Portal Project phase 2
2010-12-19

Day 9 - Lapland - Hospital F

Today we had the theme of Lapland as Christmas is getting closer and for the past few weeks it has been creeping into events in the form of songs or mentions. I decided to work once again with shadow puppets as I really enjoyed the effect they had on everyone the last time.

We also met up with the Caoimhe and Kevin, the two resident musicians, a bit before the playroom opened and decided to keep the music in the background at first and see what happens. The result was great. The children seemed to have fluctuated between the puppets and the music quite naturally not abandoning either.

At first I worked with two little boys who made a Santa and an elf very keenly and had fun dancing along to the music with the puppets. I could feel that they were very much attracted by the technicalities of the shadow stage and were curious about how the puppets will look as shadows. A really shy girl also joined us who declared she can`t draw and doesn`t want to make puppets. She was quite attracted to the spectacle of the shadow puppet stage however and soon settled to make a puppet using a sticker of a snowman and cutting it around. The puppet looked lovely and the girl was soon off to draw another snowman and giggled about telling me earlier she can not draw. The two snowman later joined the dance.

At this point the two musicians gathered enough children around to have a lovely session and there was a real feeling of creativity in the room and if they don`t have to leave it would have been very natural for puppetry and music to merge in a performance. They did leave some instruments for us for the rest of the morning that found their way into the play and later the link-up.

Once the musicians left there was only one girl who wanted to make more puppets and her and her mother made a row of puppets including a fairy-angel, an evil penguin who stole santa`s sleigh, an elf etc. Another girl also arrived from her ward to watch only but ended up making the set for the show that was forming. She also said she can`t draw but was happy to design a landscape using stickers of christmas trees and houses and cutting around them afterwards. The result was really beautiful.

Once it was time for a performance the two girls got very excited and both ended up participating in the play. We also linked up with two another hospital for a "Christmas Party" that included looking for chocolate sausages that we thought sounded horrible, singing jingle bells and playing music for the other hospital`s puppets to dance to. It was a really nice linkup.

I also had Helene from Helium and funders visiting the hospital today so we did a presentation of the 9 weeks work for everyone before lunch and recorded a video blog for the Helium website after lunch.

In the afternoon I worked with a little boy and made a snowman and a raindeer. He was also quite shy about his abilities at first but got much more confident after the sucsess of the first one. We made a little video and also took some pictures.

I really enjoyed today and felt that things were very much back to their normal in the hospital too. Using the stickers as a tool to aid for the children`s imagination and free them from inhibitions was an unexpected but great thing. I am quite surprised how easily children appropriate these "tools" and use them as inspiration rather than relying them.