Stories in Transit IX: Animation and Story Game Workshops, Palermo

Photograph: Lee Shearman

Series of collaborative workshops with Giocherenda

13-18th February 2020

Giocherenda Space, Via Aragona, 25, 90133,
Palermo

Joan Ashworth, Lee Shearman, Philip Terry and Marina Warner went to Palermo to work with the core group of Giocherenda; several teachers from CPIA brought a group of young students to the four-and-a-half day workshop. Chad Fahs, a film maker from Delaware, US, joined and is making a documentary.

From the very start on Friday 14th through to Tuesday lunchtime, the activities were intense, and everyone showed alacrity in taking up suggestions, playing the games, drawing, writing, talking... even at one point dancing. The feeling of enjoyment and involvement grew, from initial shyness. This growth of trust and pleasure in the processes was really encouraging.

The workshops began with members of Giocherenda telling us about their ideas and ideals: Dine, Moussa, Dowda and Omar emphasised collective action (‘If a finger hurts, the whole body hurts.’)

The workshops went on to include various games and ways of gathering material through walking and drawing. These exercises informed the animations worked on over the workshop days, a story scroll and possible new Giocherenda items.

Here you can find some photos of the workshop activities!

Here is the film of the workshop, made by Letizia Gullo:

Participants

Joan Ashworth - artist, filmmaker and independent scholar

Valentina Castagna - lecturer, translator, writer, former Associate Research Fellow at the Birkbeck College (University of London), worked for several years as an independent interpreter and translator for the Law Courts of Palermo

Dine Diallo - member of Giocherenda, art collective

Lee Shearman – Arts educator, illustrator and designer

Philip Terry - poet, professor at the University of Essex, where he teaches Creative Writing; writer and editor of The Penguin Book of Oulipo (2019)

Marina Warner – writer and cultural historian, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, Fellow of the British Academy and President-Elect of the Royal Society of Literature