The Lilipad Back to School Workshop Series
Hi Lilipad Community,
What a better way to start the school year with a long-awaited blog post. You haven’t heard from us in a while for a good reason: we’ve been busy running our libraries, planning to open new ones and crafting creative reading experiences for the children in our communities.
Today, we are happy to share updates from the Back to School workshops series, was made possible by the Amazon Community Grant Fund.
A Creative Triad: Imagination, Theatre & Books
Besides our signature community libraries, storytelling workshops have been a common thread of Lilipad’s offerings across the last years and a personal favourite of many of our team members and volunteers. Our library spaces, for their welcoming environment and inclusive setup, are the perfect spaces to run workshops that ally arts & craft, imagination, and of course… reading!
The Back to School workshop series took place this summer in Berlin and represented our most comprehensive workshop offering to date. Through multiple sessions during the school holidays, we were able to provide innovative reading experiences that leverage theatre as an art form, as a way to better engage with children. These workshops were tailored specifically to children residing in refugee accommodations in Berlin, also commonly called GU (Gemeinschafts Unterkunft - Shared Accommodation). We doubled up our effort particularly in one of Berlin's largest refugee shelters: GU Haarlamerstrasse in Neukölln.
Alongside Katharina, our educational programs coordinator and Jana, our creative writing specialist, we curated a workshop program meant to foster self-expression through creative play and storytelling. With a variety of activities that allow both physical and oral expression, our goal was to nurture children's development, creativity and curiosity in a holistic way. Other than their immediate intended effects, these workshops are also meant to make the library spaces attractive and to encourage attendance the entire year
As in all our workshops, multilingualism was a key component of the project. The workshops were often supported by Arabic-speaking volunteers, who accompanied the children and read stories to them in their native language. Through native language reading, our goal is to strengthen and celebrate the children’s cultural and linguistic identity, while German reading is meant to foster their literacy and overall integration into their host country.
70+ Children Benefited From This Summer Program
In total, 71 children attended at least one workshop from this Back to School program in the summer, most of which aged between 6 and 12 years old. The reception of children was very positive, as many took part with enthusiasm and expressed eagerness to join again for the following sessions. Thanks to its varied program, this series was ideal for children who wanted to attend different sessions but also worked as standalone workshops that anyone from the community could drop into. You can have a sneak peak at the brilliant creativity of children in the workshops spotlighted below:
Kamishibai Reading was held in our library in the refugee accommodation of GU Haarlamertrasse in July 2023. It was a rich and engaging workshop which brought together 12 children. The workshop started with fun theatre exercises, like energetic claps and playful movements, where the children got to mimic animals and other characters. In the final exercise, all children gathered in a circle and responded enthusiastically to different soundscapes, such as the soothing flow of water or the gentle rustling of a forest. One of the greatest highlights was older siblings who took on a nurturing role, integrating younger participants in the group.
Sketchnotes & Fantasy was a two-day workshop held in GU Britz and GU Kiefholzstrasse in August 2023. Theatre exercises kickstarted all sessions, with children impersonating characters of their choice and creating imaginative scenes. Following this, children were introduced to sketchnoting. Younger children focused on creating their own sketch notebooks and drawings using the art supplies at their disposal. Meanwhile, the older group copied images and storylines from books, and soon realised their creative potential and began exploring their own ideas.
Thank you to the Amazon Community Fund!
We’d like to thank Amazon for their precious support on this project. Their grant has allowed us to acquire the professional resources needed to create those workshops, as well as the supplies needed to run them. The impact of this project proves to be very successful with children’s imagination, creativity and socio-emotional skills stimulated and developed in a holistic way. We hope to continue this partnership in the future!
If you are curious about our workshops and would like to find us more, don’t hesitate to reach our team member Jana (jana@lilipad.library.org).
Stay tuned for more!
Blog post written by Léa Ichikawa, Social Impact Lead at Lilipad.
Contributors: Jana Gebhard, Project Lead Berlin and Sara Arsalane, Founder & Managing Director.
