During the spring season the smell of fresh cut grass and the sound of birds singing is in the air. It is a perfect time to officially launch the Grade 4 “Inheritance and Innovation in Light and Shadow” project!
This collaboration project aims to allow students to learn outside of the classroom by gaining valuable experience at the Songjiang Intangible Cultural Heritage Learning Base. In the visual art classroom, through the guidance of teachers and interdisciplinary exploration of shadow puppetry, students gained understanding, appreciation, and first-hand experience. With the collaboration of the STEAM teachers, students used their puppets to prepare for the creation of a stop motion animation piece. We are really looking forward to the seeing their results and can’t wait to share them all with you.
Beginning with the traditional Zou Malou built in the Ming Dynasty, students were greeted by its fine beams, pillars and door leaf partitions carved with Chinese and Western patterns. This carved building covers an area of more than six hundred square meters and concentrates on the humanistic history of the city, its cultural achievements, ancestors, and famous people.
Ingenuity
Ingenious and delicate bamboo weaving, Gu embroidery with needle and pen, harmonious root carving Ming Yuan, and Qing square tables and chairs can be seen throughout. The intangible cultural heritage items in this carved building are steeped in history in one room after another.
The next room we visited in this glorious building was a shadow puppet museum, the main focus of our visit. The interested students took their seats in front of the curtain and listened carefully to the introduction of shadow puppets by the instructor. Curious students asked many questions: “Why is the shadow curtain tilted like this?” “What does the backstage of a shadow puppet show look like?” “What is the wire above the backstage curtain used for?”
After discovering the significant and dedicated efforts made by all the performers, especially the carving of the puppets using a variety of over three thousand knives, the students sighed deeply: “It turns out that it is so complicated – I will never underestimate shadow puppets anymore.”
Under the leadership and guidance of the art teachers, the students actively participated in the live shadow puppet performance, but it turned out the shadow puppets were not a simple thing to operate. Looking at the busy little puppets on the curtain, the students burst into joyful laughter, and at the same time they better understood the difficulty that shadow puppeteers face in their varied performances. As the saying goes, “It is easy to gain experience only on paper, but it is absolutely necessary to practice it in real life.”
Under the leadership and guidance of the art teachers, the students actively participated in the live shadow puppet performance, but it turned out the shadow puppets were not a simple thing to operate. Looking at the busy little puppets on the curtain, the students burst into joyful laughter, and at the same time they better understood the difficulty that shadow puppeteers face in their varied performances. As the saying goes, “It is easy to gain experience only on paper, but it is absolutely necessary to practice it in real life.”
Passing on the torch
The entry point to this project was a visit to the Intangible Cultural Education Base. It provided Grade 4 students with a primary experience exploring both the visual and the ‘behind the scenes’. Each student personally experienced the cultural attraction of shadow play while greatly enhancing their cultural confidence.
Art has never existed in isolation. Shadow puppetry is a comprehensive art, requiring the comprehensive cultivation of music, art, history, and performance. After returning to the school, the Grade 4 students embarked on an inquiry-based lesson of shadow puppetry. In the visual art classroom students actively shared various concepts regarding the subject matter, with some students highlighting the immense importance of this practice to our cultural heritage. There were many innovative ideas and new perspectives discussed – we are looking forward to sharing these ideas with you soon.
In the next Grade 4 art class, students will bring all their experiences from this educational visit and creatively combine the cultural characteristics of our school in order to carry out a diversified and innovative production based on traditional shadow puppets throughs painting, production, and performance.
We believe that in this group of little ‘art guardians’, the shadow puppets, with a history of more than two thousand years, will motivate our students to focus less on their electronic screens. We look forward to the creativity and outcomes produced by the students during our Arts Festival!