My Adventures in Germany: Folkways 2009

Back in September, when I was walking with Eoin along listening to him tell stories about his father, about Ireland and about history in general, I would have never guessed that this past Friday would have happened.

Eoin had a brilliant idea of doing an international storytelling festival at school and inviting his father, Eddie Lenihan, to be the "main act" so to speak while teachers would tell their own cultures stories to rotating groups of students and parents. And so, Folkways was born.

Last Friday, I walked into my room which was no longer my room, but the video installation room. In the middle sat a table with four projectors and four laptops. Three of my bulletin boards were covered with white sheets and a screen stood in front of my desk. Playing simultaneously on all four projectors was a program called "Hands". It was four different videos showing handicrafts around Ireland. It was completely silent.

I knew this day was going to be good.

Unfortunately, Eddie Lenihan couldn't make it at the last minute since Ireland had been swamped by 8 weeks of rain. Thankfully, our storyteller from Australia agreed to do an extra session.

The students grades 1-8 were split into 8 groups and each group had a teacher leader. I was Group 3's leader and I had a great mix of kids. After some opening comments by Cathie, we rotated around 8 different performance areas. Here was the run down:

Performance 1: Andy--American folk music; Andrew W.--story of Bonnie Prince Charlie
Performance 2: A man from Bavaria who talked about Oberammergau and played the mandolin
Performance 3: Eoin--Irish stories from Mikey Griffey, a 92 year-old friend of the family; Dina--Croatian song
Performance 4: Melissa--Native Nova Scotian tale; Valerie--story of Thanksgiving through Squanto's eyes
Performance 5: Matt--Maori Creation story; Susan--Aboriginal legend
Performance 6: Sarah--Cornish Mermaid tale; Alke--Hamburg water carrier
Performance 7: Hands video installation
Performance 8: Morgan Schatz-Blackrose--Stone soup for a better world

The kids (and adults for that matter) were enthralled. Every performance was different and offered up a different point of view and experience. The video installation was incredible. Kids as young as 5 sat completely silent for 20 minutes straight, watching films on carving boats, making baskets or making butter with no audio.

Here are some of the pictures I took during the day.