Arts Activities Support

Quantitative Data: 1,301 students and 535 adults over the three day period. We also used a short survey form to capture audience responses: 98% highly favorable. We have placed the form on our website to solicit additional responses from those who did not do so on site as well as sent it out to our email lists. Yes, we were able to achieve our artistic goals and in the case of the desired audience interaction and participation we think that we exceeded those goals. Each of the professional Master Storytellers did an excellent job of demonstrating the actual artistic quality of oral storytelling as an art form. Each audience gave enthusiastic responses to the artist's engaging performances. In a number of instances the adults appeared to be as "caught up" in the narratives the children were. It's a great feeling to see adults and children equally involved. It teaches children that adults can share their creativity and imagination together - without fear of the loss of their "adult status." What worked was the narratives and the interaction between professional performer and engaged audience participant. This is something that we always strive to achieve every year because it's a major part of oral storytelling. It's a visual demonstration of the imagination that the Tellers call upon from the audience participants. And it's often very spontaneous, creative and informative. It's part and parcel of the African form of storytelling. That is to say that in spite of how often a story is told or how many times it is heard, the difference is in the audience participation which ensures that the "story" is forever different! Each of the things that we have said are the strengths of our artistic process: evoking the imagination and imagery of the stories; involving the audience as participants in the actual narrative; including the audience participants' responses as part of the narrative and encouraging all to immerse themselves as part of the performance. Likewise the challenges are a direct result of what we strive to achieve. It's an emotional, high-energy, draining experience to see the audience for the first time and work hard to ensure that they accompany you on the narrative journey. The audience's involvement requires sincere work on the part of each Teller. That same response is what recharges each of us as well. At the end of each day, it's great to know that the audience came. It's even greater to know that they left feeling uplifted and informed. We were indeed successful in reaching our desired audiences. It was just as we had identified in our initial proposal. It was very diverse in terms of age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and ability. We held all of our events in venues that were handicapped accessible and provided ASL interpreters for our storytelling events. We also enlisted the assistance of various media that specifically addressed the ASL audience to encourage attendance.