Inuit - atelier+ for primary school

Inuit artists are incredibly good at telling a whole story in a single beautiful drawing. Really! A museum guide will show you a few of their favourites, and then it’s your turn to explore the exhibition and find the artworks that speak to you most. Can you invent a story to go with them? And can you do it the other way around? 

After a short introduction to the themes of the exhibition, the guide takes the students into the world of Inuit storytelling. Step by step, they are encouraged to create their own stories, starting from one or more graphic artworks in the exhibition. 

Inuit storytelling is wonderfully accessible: a series of events is often described in short, clear sentences, sometimes without a spectacular ending, but always with humour and a touch of imagination. Animals dress up as people, two pieces of fruit go hunting together, and a goddess sulks at the bottom of the sea because there are too many knots in her hair. Just another day in the Inuit world! 

The workshop continues in the studio, where the guide tells a story and the students turn it into a striking image. Just like Inuit artists, they work with markers and stencils. Along the way, they explore positive and negative space (how do you make a stencil, and what do you leave out?), composition (where does everything go?), colour gradients (using a sponge to apply the stencil) and texture, discovering just how much you can do with a simple pencil line. 

Finally, the students place their artworks side by side and use them to build a brand-new story together. The possibilities are endless!