The combination of art and storytelling has a long tradition. In the Middle Ages, monks and nuns already decorated the elaborately handwritten books with splendid illustrations and ornaments. Even today, when I no longer read illustrated children's books aloud, I love to hold beautifully illustrated book editions in my hand. The pictures are in dialogue with the text and sometimes reveal new aspects to the story.
The other way around, too, it's great to creatively engage with an object on display and come up with your own stories about it: What might have happened before or after the scene in the painting? What memory is evoked by looking at this sculpture? What story do I want to invent when I take these three artefacts, that is three objects on display, together? What does that work show me in relation to important issues of our time and how do I relate to them? As the French author Emile Zola so beautifully said, a work of art is "an angle of nature viewed through a temperament."
This diversity of perspectives, unbounded inspiration, and more are what StoryUp Your Artefact® workshops are all about. You can find some videos of past projects here
During the pandemic, we all became painfully aware that art and culture are not dispensable. "Art is indispensable in dealing with existential questions of our human condition, also and especially in times when certainties become precarious and social foundations prove to be fragile." (Monika Grütters, Tagesspiegel 08.05.2020)
Thus, together with author and psychologist Stephanie Braun , we organized an online encounter with art & storytelling, in a beautifully designed virtual outdoor gallery by a lake with paintings from the 17th, 19th and 20th/21st centuries. The theme, windows in art, spoke to our ten participants from the soul, at a time when many of us were looking out the window more than being outside.
Now we have taken an important leap forward and have registered StoryUp Your Artefact® as a brand together with Stephanie and successfully launched our first collaborations with museums and art spaces, which can take place both online and on site.
- to reduce barriers in the contact with art
- to spark the storytelling imagination through the intense viewing of artefacts
- to think outside the box and promote openness
- um über den Tellerrand hinweg zu schauen und Offenheit zu fördern.
- to address burning issues of our time through the medium of art and storytelling
As part of the exhibition "Rome's Flowing Borders. Life at the Limes" at the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn , we developed a concept for secondary school students in which they embodied a Germanic or Roman figure and invented a story based on three items of the exhibit ("artefacts"). The mixing of creative storytelling and real historical context motivates children, creates a personal connection, and sensitizes them to the gaps and ephemeral theses of any historiography.
For the current exhibition "Home between a Shelter and a Cage" by photographer Yoav Goldwein at Brüneo Artwork Spaces in Brühl we have developed a creative workshop for adults, where we follow our associations and memories on the theme of "being at home" through image viewing and narrative, and get creative in the process. Astrid also organized a literary reading together with the actress Anja Jazeschann, where from A for Jane Austen to S for Zanna Skloniowska to W for Jeanette Winterson, the complexity of the topic was narratively experienced in a foray through world literature.
current events: 09/17 in French
NB: der anvisierte Termin am 02.09. auf Deutsch musste leider aus organisatorischen Gründen abgesagt werden.
If you are interested in a StoryUp Your Artefact® workshop with your group in an art location of the Cologne-Bonn area or in an online encounter with art, please feel free to contact us: info@storyatelier.org or also contact@storyupyourartefact.de
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