The StoryBox project – field report, Zichron Yaakov Israel, part five

By Limor Shiponi

We have stories! Today they finished writing them so the meeting was mainly about writing, prompting and writing again. Ilan asked me to bring the box, “It has a magical influence,” he said. It does. As they wrote I was looking for a matchbox Nathalie told me about and I found it. Two of the boys were finished so I gave them the tiny box, told them about the girl who made it, the girl from Switzerland who didn’t have a story and asked them if they would write one for her. Since we had only about 20 min. left until the end of the day, they decided it would be a good idea to launch “The Tiny StoryBox Tiny Project” 🙂

They wrote a beginning, we’ll write some instructions and place the matchbox into a slightly larger tiny box so it can be its own project for others to continue. I hope that by the time it gets back to Kevin the girl will have a story…

Then Ilan took me to see the drama class – he is the school’s drama teacher and his students, the same kids we are working with, were preparing scenery he thought using as a background for their storytelling. It’s a small warm space.

From here on we have several tasks we would like to complete:

Practice telling the stories so we can have a storytelling session. It will be recorded on video.

Translate the stories into English and create a printed version. The translations will be made by two of the kids, another will take everybody’s photos and another will edit and print the booklet.

Take one of the stories (Ilan will choose which one), turn it into a mini-play and rehearse it. This will be a good experience for those who will feel too embarrassed to tell their story. The play too will be recorded on video.

Ilan is going to write a piece about Zichron Yaakov which has a special story. We are going to take the entire class to main-street which is an historical site and shoot some photos and video.

If they will manage to do it on time, some of them want to create comics and a statue. These too will be documented in digital form.

We’re going to check if we can invite the local press, so if that happens, it will join the rest of the material. Ilan told them about the local press and they went “Duhh..”. “Tell them about Chanel 2 and you’ll get them listening,” I was joking and then one of them asked another, “Why don’t you tell your uncle about this?” turns out this kid’s uncle is a well known interviewer on national TV and a really cool guy… we’ll see.

All this material will be edited into a video-clip. Two of them are going to write, play and record music for it. One of the fathers, a professional video man will help us edit the digital material. The clip and the story-booklet will be placed into the StoryBox, the rest will stay here.