When studying the imaginal life of children, you have to create conditions that help children access and articulate their process. There are many really simple tools to help children express their ideas and to hear the constructs of others. One of the projects anyone can implement for research and enjoyment is a version of oral story-telling, called the “Pass Around Story.”
How does it work?
A pass around story is simply a take on a verbally told communal story. Children (or if any age) gather around in a circle. The premise of the activity is that you make a story together. Whomever wants to participate may or may not at their choosing. Taking turns going around, each participant tells a part of the Pass Around Story. Some groups choose to use drawing/painting as a tool (big whiteboard, large piece of paper on a wall, fancy interactive screens) for visualizing the story, some groups choose to remain visual-less. In our research classroom, a different person was the leader of the story every time we told one (that person would start the story and set the stage).
Though it may seem simple to introduce a method like the Pass Around Story, it outlines that with slight adjustments to what we already do as researchers, educators and therapists, we can have more intentional access to exercising imaginal skills, and their outcomes.
What practices are emphasized in pass-around storytelling?
– Relating to a shifting group
– Understanding that there are alternative paths of futures
– Equal voice between child, community and authority
– Understanding of the sense of losing and gaining agency/control
– Presence, patience, sustained interest in changing narrative
– Translating imaginal ideas into verbal or visual form
Example Pass Around Story
H: There was once a small child who had a very special garden. This child grew beautiful flowers in the garden. ALL sorts of flowers grew there, tall white flowers that grew forever and yellow sunflowers that were tall and strong. Everyday the child would go out the garden and raise his hands high in the air and suddenly the flowers would make beautiful music! Each flower had a special sound, from high and lovely to fast and perky. Like an conductor, the child directed the orchestra of flowers, until he began to hear a very strange noise he had never heard before….
M: He heard a creep creep and he looked up and there were pumpkin heads with treasure. They knocked on the door but nobody was there because the boy was in the back yard. Knock Knock. Nobody answered. They got paint, paper, cots, walls, and shelves and hit on the door with all of that stuff. Finally the boy heard and went to the door and opened it but nobody was there….
K: and there was a little noise of stomping through the woods and the boy didn’t know what it was. And he said what is it? And he walked and walked until he saw a humongous monster that was tromping. It almost squished him. And then, it did squish him and it tromped on all the things in the garden.
N: Then the monster fell on the house. The house broke. The pumpkin heads walked in and looked at the monster and he was dead because when he fell, he fell onto the point of the house and it hit him in the belly. Fire came then and the pumpkin heads began to die.
G: then a shark came from Africa and the monster came alive again. Thent he shark ate the monster and another shark came back into the water. That shark ate all the world and all the breath.
W: Then the world came back out of the mouth and the child became unsquished and became alive again and the flowers came back and he went back in his house. Then he put his hands up and…. It didn’t work! He tried again and this time he heard different sounds. One was mean and strong and one was little and beautiful and one was even handsome. They were all different in different ways.
S: Then the sun went down and the moon came up and the power rangers fight the monster. Then something else came… it was Sky High. And he was SUPER strong and he could lift up the ceiling and then he could lift up the monster and break the house in.
W: The fishheads came from the United States of America and played with cars and they said “ this is fun!” Then they put them back in the box. They went home and they went to bed in their wooden beds.