"We've been told that things in here are talking, but adults cannot hear anything Can you hear them?"

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THE TALKING PLAYGROUND (previously titled The Wayfinders), is a location triggered audio experience which brings built and natural landscapes to life. In a special recording process about ten, ten-year-old children improvise voices for chosen non-human things.

 

Then children four to seven years old, are invited to wear the 'special equipment' that enables them to enter the mysterious zone. Trees, rocks, rubbish bins, the sky, the wind, fences and pathways all talk as soon as a way-finding child wanders near. 

 

This experience genuinely surprises children, who delight in being able to hear the seemingly-magical sounds whilst they scribe their expert interpretation to give back to the unhearing adults. 

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The voiced characters of The Talking Playground are developed by participants local to each place, each in a half hour session. Wandering solo - away from the gaze of adults - they each respond to Jessica's prompts via a phone call, always dropping into a rare imagination-state to create rich uninhibited material.

 

These children are at once storytellers and protagonists as they channel their own experiences with myth-like imaginings.

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The Talking Playground responds to the urgent need for new ways of understanding landscapes which have been deeply modified by colonial and adult-logical thinking. Drawing on children’s innately empathetic perceptions, it considers environments as living places rather than resources. Simultaneously, it empowers children as active citizens whose experiential ‘maps’ can provide insightful new reading of places we think are ‘known’.

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Click the music symbol and hover on each video to hear the voices created by children at Woodlands School with Jessica and audio artist Kieran Lucas for Sheffield Theatres, UK.

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