Childhood Home & Family - Creative Activities  more activities >>

Introductions, or what's in a name?
A good starting point is a name exercise in which people work in pairs, talking about their own name. Who gave it to them? Does it have a meaning? Is it a family name going back generations? Do they like their names? Have they changed their names?

The pairs can then report back some of their findings to the larger group, by introducing their partner and seeing how much they can remember of what was said. This exercise is a good way of emphasising the value of listening to everyone in the group and taking some responsibility for remembering what was said. Each partner should check if there is anything in what they have said in their pairs which they do not wish to share in the larger group. This reinforces the idea of mutual respect for confidentiality between story tellers and within the group. This is a very powerful exercise in learning about the backgrounds of different group members. However, one must be aware that one or two people may not want to talk about their names and may find the approach too personal, so group leaders must be sensitive to individual needs and not force the exercise.

A basket of memories
Pass round an empty basket and ask each member of the group to share what memories it triggers of their country of origin. What remembered object would they put into the basket from 'home' and what associated feelings and images are conjured up by it? The basket is a good icebreaker because everyone takes a turn, contributing as much or as little as they wish and it is a simple way of bringing together cultures and generations. The basket itself should be handmade, if possible and well worn.

Three words
Ask the group members to mention three words which come to mind when they think of the place where they grew up. These could be words describing a place, a sound, a smell, an action, a person or people, a photo taken there or a favourite food. Then ask people to work in pairs, sharing the memories which lay behind the words they first thought of. Some of these shared conversations can be relayed to the whole group, as this will probably help to trigger more memories.

Drawing a memory
The previous exercise leads naturally into a drawing session, where group members can help one another to record what food was made, where it was cooked and served and who was there to eat it. This is a great opportunity to remember small details, which sometimes get forgotten when recording verbally. The drawings can be very diagrammatic with 'stick people' representing the different characters remembered. The purpose of the exercise is not to produce fine art, but to stimulate detailed recall and have a means of sharing it with the group. If the group work in pairs on this exercise, they can stimulate each other with questions and then jointly present their 'findings' to the rest of the group.

The Deptford Indo-Chinese group drawing their memories

The world beneath your feet
Ask the group to imagine that the floor is a map of the world. Agree which direction is north, south, east and west. Agree where you are now. Ask group members to go and stand on the part of the floor which can represent where they grew up. With eyes closed, they can visualise better their childhood home. Ask each person to say out loud two words which have come to mind during this exercise. Then ask people to share what first came to their minds with one other person. The same exercise can be done sitting in a group, but the choosing of a place on the map can stimulate warm exchanges, as people find themselves standing near to someone from the same region.
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A guided tour
The people we have interviewed have remembered a great deal about the layout of their childhood home. Ask members of the group to take you on a guided tour of the place where they grew up, opening doors, seeing familiar pieces of furniture, noticing views from the windows and remembering where they slept or where food was prepared. This can be done in pairs or as a small group of explorers with a guide.

The above exercise can be extended to include the local area, including their school, the local shops, the nearest play space. Again the "guided tour" approach, with the person remembering as the "expert guide", will help to reinforce the confidence of the story-teller, the need for the group to listen to one another's particular experiences, and the pleasure of sharing memories held in common.

A soundscape
Ask each member of the group in turn to think about the sounds around his or her childhood home. Examples might be the wind, birds, trains, ships' hooters, sheep, cows, market traders. Then the rest of the group can make a soundscape, each making a different noise.

On this plate ….
Another useful ice-breaker is to pass round a simple plate or bowl and ask members of the group to tell what they would put on it as a memory of food their parents or grandparents cooked for them. They may remember smells and tastes, likes and dislikes. Often people will spontaneously remember the circumstances under which the food was prepared and eaten.

Cooking up memories
Many storytellers remember favourite foods, often made from local produce. Collect together some of the favourite recipes of people in the group into a small booklet. It is fun to try to re-make some of these if cooking facilities are available, using the methods the older people remember their mothers using as far as possible. If you are able to photograph the group preparing the food and the finished dishes, these images could be illustrations for the booklet. Eating the results together is a good way to celebrate all that has been remembered.

Everything fresh
Fresh fruit and vegetables can act as an effective trigger for memories of childhood homes, since so many of the story-tellers remember yards, gardens and open spaces where exotic fruits were always freely available. Bring in examples of the fruits and vegetables mentioned by the group and pass them round. As people handle and smell these, ask for their local name and a recipe using them, so that the group can make comparisons. If fresh food is not available to stimulate memories, it is a good start to show pictures of the main items remembered.

Chinese food market

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In my family
Family organisation varies greatly according to culture. Which examples resonate most with the members of the group? Some examples from this chapter are: the extended family where everyone lives and eats together, the family with two mothers, the single parent family, the family where the father worked away from home, the family where the father was there but rarely seen because of long working hours, the nomadic family where generations work together taking care of livestock and building temporary huts.

Indoor child or outdoor child
Story-tellers remember very different kinds of childhood, from the child kept mainly indoors by protective and strict parents to the free-roaming child growing up outdoors and near to nature. What do group members think of as the space where they spent most of their childhood days? Can they draw, or ask you to draw for them, this space with themselves in it. The pictures can be quite diagrammatic (even "stick-people") as the pictures are a means of retrieving memories, rather than a means of generating art works. If the result is attractive as well, this is of course a bonus, and these images can be displayed so that others become interested in what the group is doing.

My family tree
Some of the story-tellers have very large families with many siblings. Some way wish to try to represent their family tree, showing where all their brothers and sisters spent their lives and where they still have family members scattered across the world.

Arms around the world
Putting some of these family trees together and comparing them is a fascinating way of seeing how world-wide are the contacts older people have and finding common links within the group.
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Maps and journeys
The story-tellers come from all over the world. Use the maps from the Internet or a school atlas to see where their birthplaces are. Have some of the students got connections with these places? Can they draw a map to show how many parts of the world have family connections for them and show where members of their families have travelled to and from in the past?

When I was a child …..
Childhood experience. Invite grandparents or great-grandparents of the students into the classroom to share their memories of their early days and to compare notes with today's children.

A Day in the life…
Some of the storytellers grew up in the confined space of a boat and others in the wide open space of the desert, moving from one resting place to another, or within an extended family compound. Working in twos or threes, the students should select an environment which is very different from their own. They should imagine a day spent there as a child and write a diary entry for that day. The students might wish to look in the next chapter (Growing Up) to see how the person they have chosen develops their story, and use this information to help them with the task. Accounts could then be compared with others who have chosen very different environments.

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© Age Exchange 2006