Earth Children
Artists: Serene Lau, Laura Marini and Scarlet Cartwright
Earth Children is an interactive art installation that challenges indoor play taboos through sustainable earth architecture, where children design, create and destroy their own indoor Earth World.
The Colour and Sound of My Totem
Artists: Bart Willoughby, Frances Loriente and Ravenna Keller
The Colour and Sound of My Totem explores the significance of totems in Aboriginal culture. Children design and create a story of their totem animal using everyday recycled materials. They also create music to mimic the sounds of their animal.
During development workshops, children used visual art, music and creative writing to build a large sculptural work and musical performance.
I Am Nature
Artists: Gabriela Georges, Jennifer Tran and Jose-Pepe Inostroza Acqueveque
I Am Nature explores the life cycle of five animals through movement, song, and storytelling - within a sensory installation with a focus on natural materials. Delivered in partnership with City of Melbourne Family Services to engage families from Carlton playgroups and young parents from St Joseph's Flexible Learning Centre.
Polite Mammals
Artists: The Wholesome Hour - Lily Fish, Kimberley Twiner, Ell Sachs and Sunanda Sachatrakul
Polite Mammals is a sketch comedy show for young audiences, devised and designed in collaboration with 5 to 7 year olds. Using David Attenborough style nature documentaries as a jumping off point, it explors animals of all kinds: real, imaginary, fantastical, disgusting, stinky, sparkly, intelligent, and completely silly.
In Your Arms
Artists: Vanessa Chapple, Rivka Worth and collaborators
In Your Arms is an immersive performance work for babies and their carers - providing a chance to explore our youngest generation's relationship to the natural world. Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and movement principles inspired by the somatic work of Body Mind Centering, underpinned the development of this work.
The project was created with families at ArtPlay using song, story and Biophilic design. Participants were guided to follow their baby's developmental patterns of curiosity alongside nature's seasonal rhythms.
Imagination Gamespaces
Artists: Brendan Ternus, Alia Syed, Shaun Wkyes
In Imagination Gamespaces children create interactive story-based ‘escape rooms’, drawing on the disciplines of game design, creative writing, visual art and performance.
In the immersive development workshops children dreamt up new worlds, developed characters and stories, devised mysterious clues and tricky riddles, and designed fantastical costumes and sets. This resulted in ‘escape rooms’ designed by children for children.
The Wayfinders
Artists: Jessica Wilson, Ben Paul, Justin Marshall, Tom Burfadeci
The Wayfinders is a location triggered audio experience which theatricalises built and natural landscapes using the voices and imaginations of children.
Children become storytellers and protagonists voicing their experiences in outdoor spaces with myth-like imaginings. In the development process 9 to 12 year olds created audio material to animate the environment. Later 3 to 6 year olds responded to these creations jumping in and out of invisible sound zones responding to the voices embedded in the environment.
Sound Capsule for Future Humans
Artists: Justin Marshall and Aviva Endean
A Sound Capsule for Future Humans is buried near ArtPlay and will be rediscovered by the kids of tomorrow. What will this place sound like in 100 years?
The capsule includes scores and charts based on our acoustic ecology co-created with children at ArtPlay and the surrounds of Birrarung Marr. When the sound capsule is opened, future generations will be able to hear the world from the perspective of children and understand how the sound of this place has changed.
Wood Wide Web
Artists: Barking Spider Visual Theatre
Wood Wide Web is a theatrical installation representing the secret world that lives beneath our feet. This underground, networked world explores how the collaborative nature of trees is critical to their survival, referencing a parallel to our human collaborative effort to work together to create a cleaner, greener planet.
Polypropylene Dreams
Artists: Briony Farrell, Christian Taylor and collaborators
Polypropylene Dreams is a theatrical performance exploring climate anxiety through the story of Jasper and May. The trash creature who lives under Jasper and May’s beds keeps waking them up to take them on walks through their dreams; dreams about the future of the planet. What is it trying to tell them?
In development workshops, children draw on the disciplines of creative writing, collaborative design and puppet-making to help build this fantastical theatre journey. Whilst also learning how to recognise and manage feelings of anxiety.
