Artsy Story-Times and Dotty Flowers
The Vancouver International Children’s Festival May 27th – June 1st 2014
By Helen Duckworth
To celebrate the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, which took place on Granville Island this year, the Federation of Canadian Artists hosted a series of free and family-friendly activities.
Little visitors were able to listen to a story or two by one of our volunteer readers. Stories read included ‘The Dot’. ‘Skycolor’ and ‘Ish’ by Peter H. Reynolds. His popular picture books all convey stories of children who either encounter challenges in their art, or think they simply can’t draw or paint.
By the end of each story of course, the child has embraced the challenges of their artistic conundrums, or discovered their own artistic ability, or a new style of their own, which makes these stories a great inspiration to those three to five year olds who get frustrated because they ‘can’t draw’.
Little visiting artists were invited to create a ‘dotty flower’, inspired particularly by ‘The Dot’ and the Federation of Canadian Artists exhibition ‘Flowers and Foliage’ which was displayed in the Federation Gallery at the same time as the children’s festival. Artists were encouraged to contribute to the exhibition, by adding their flower to a special wall dedicated to displaying pieces by the participating children, so they could exhibit their dotty flowers right alongside the beautiful works from FCA member artists.
Most of the mini-masters and mistresses were far too enamoured with their flowers to leave them with us though, so despite having only a few flowers to our wall, many children were able to enjoy the stories, participate in an art activity and perhaps have that first engaging, exciting art experience which plants the seed for a future love of the arts!
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