Word Forms, Russia

Project name: Word Forms: Literary studio in the sculpture workshop with support from Publishing House Samokat

Project location: The project is located in the City Sculpture Museum (Anikushin’s Workshop) located in Saint Petersburg. We have chosen this museum as a site for our literature studies as it provides modern environment for creative experiments in partnership with professional artists and sculptors. We believe that creative and free game activities generate the necessary atmosphere for children to express their emotions connected with reading.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slovoformy/?pnref=story

Other social media channels: https://vk.com/slovoformy

Project description:

Project manager: philologist, journalist Xeniya Zernina
Place of employment: e-journal Papmambook devoted to books for children http://www.papmambook.ru/
Leading teacher (pedagogue): museum pedagogue Xeniya Menshikova

Place of employment: Literary Memorial Museum of Anna Akhmatova http://akhmatova.spb.ru/

Target audience: children from 6 to 14 years old. Workshops are held for children of different age in groups of 10-12 people as well as their parents.
Word Forms is a cycle of programs for children with the aim of studying literature. During a year four programs devoted to a certain book are realized consequently. Each program includes four sessions: literary, acting, artistic, as well as a meeting with a person involved in creating a book (the author, translator, illustrator, editor).
In a series of workshops the book is revealed from different sides. Joint reading aloud is accompanied by different types of a child’s creative activities, e.g. children can write a letter from one character to another, set up an improvised performance where the parts are played by kitchen utensils and the psychological portrait of the character is created with the help of clay, plaster, paper or wire. The result of a child’s creative activity represents the expression of personal reading impressions and gives the basis for project evaluation. A meeting with the author (translator, illustrator or publisher) becomes an additional way of encouraging children to read. Children understand that there are real interesting people behind the book.

Goal and purpose of the project:

• We create the actable environment which could support children’s interest in independent reading, contribute to their reading culture and eventually to their personal growth.
• We support family reading traditions. Parents attending workshops with their children acquire new emotional experience from books which can be partially reproduced at home.
• We popularize high quality literature published by the publishing house Samokat for children, e.g. Finn-Ole Heinrich, Gudrun Mebs, Annie Schmidt, Ulf Stark, Stanislav Vostokov, Marie-Aude Murail, Rune Belsvik, Siri Kolu, David Almond, Angela Nanetti, etc. Thanks to it, children get acquainted with new cultures and learn to respect other lifestyles.

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team:

In modern world there is a problem of lack of motivation to read of many children and teenagers. Being experts in the field of literature for children and reading for children, we want to create comfortable environment for reading, give an inspiring example to children and their parents. Communication around the book helps children understand themselves and others better, opens new facets in relationships between people, teaches to contemplate and fantasize, helps to see the world more multi-sided. It is important to mention that there has not been any project like that in Saint- Petersburg so far.

Use of prize money:

In case we win, we plan to develop the project on a larger scale and make it better known in the city. We would be able to deal with more books, devise more programs and invite more participants to workshops. The budget we need is planned to be sent on creating scripts of workshops, advertising and rent, materials needed for classes, camera work, getting professional artists and representatives of the publishing industry involved. Besides we would like to organize field programs for family camps in other cities of Russia and in other countries.