the imaginarium: And we're Off!

It's actually happening…

The (Extraordinary! Magically Marvellous!)

is off and running!

We've had three meetings so far—two sessions with my first group (who I'll call my 'younger' group here, just to keep things simple), and one session with my second, 'older' group.

Of course I didn't start thinking of taking photos until session # 3!

Our first few meetings have been truly lovely, a lot of story telling, imagining, drawing, and a lot of laughter.

Session #1

In the first Imaginarium session with my younger group, we had a great pile of beach rocks to play with. Kids made patterns with them, invented towns, and each picked a single rock to tell a story about. One rock could summon water dragons; another could send out a rainbow so very special that when you walked towards it, it didn't disappear. Many of our rocks had marvellous magical powers. My rock had a fairy living inside it—you had to kiss it to free her :)

At some point, we found ourselves outside, and two of our 'Imaginariers' made movies about their rocks. One did an All About Rocks tv show, and another did a Rock Commercial ("But that's not all! This rock can do this, too!") We laughed so hard my face hurt.

*update: oh, look! A photo of a rock village,
taken on my mum's phone after everyone had left :)

Session #2

In the first session with my older group, people brought special things from home to talk about. Someone brought their first PlayStation game; another person brought a beautiful jade dragon. Someone talked about their new puppy, and another person spoke about their new owl hat. The puppy was in fact a fiery, flying, fluffy puppy that emerged from an exploding star. The owl hat was said to have been found in a hat museum, and together we imagined its life as a flying owl-head for a while. We were also introduced to a stick that was actually a magical pipe that could blow bubbles, found while sitting in a lemonade bath on the beach. Brilliant!

And one person brought a jar of air!

People told fantastic and true stories about their special things—they were all wonderful! For one story, I got the white board out and began illustrating it. Imagine, a very quick stick figure grandma hiding in a hole in a tree, her eyes wide, her curls in disarray, me drawing as fast as the storyteller spoke. We couldn't stop laughing.

At the end of that session, we sat ourselves around my long table, and drew the story of our special thing. There were all these heads bent over their paper, people scritching away with pens and pencils and textas…we made little books out of our pictures, we told new stories… it was magic.

Session # 3

In the next session with my younger group, we began again by telling stories of our special things…but once I pulled out the white board, that quickly turned into all of us drawing…

on the whiteboard…