Finding ‘Osogbo’s Feet’: African stories, made by children, produced collaboratively
How does Africa look when transformed through children’s imagination, and how can we develop participatory approaches that rely on children’s abilities to tell their own African stories?
Over the last few months, Ayodeji Alaka and I have been experimenting with transforming African travel photographs and travel narratives — by African writers and photographers — into a story, written by children, for children. We wondered how primary-age children living in the UK could be encouraged to make meaning from the words and images provided by African creatives.
We also wanted to explore innovative methods through which children could collaborate — through what we called ‘visual improvisation’ — producing narratives sparked by African creativity, and then guided by the children’s own imaginations. We are now working to harness the children’s narratives, working with a group of young creatives at the National Film and Television School (NFTS), to translate them into a story universe where children participate through games, animation and immersive products.
Our first workshop, in London, brought together photography by Amaize Ojeikere of the sacred Osun grove in Osogbo, Nigeria, and a group of British children. Some of the children had some knowledge of Nigeria, owing to their diaspora heritage, and some had none at all.
We watched, thrilled, as the children collaboratively re-interpreted the photos of Osogbo’s beautiful forest grove, the Osun worshippers, and the statues of traditional Yoruba deities, into a story involving a quest, a sickness in a village, the help of a Squiggly Tree, an elephant, and a group of ghosts silenced by approaching flames.
But how, now, do we best take the children’s sometimes wild, always imaginative, creativity forward and turn it into a narrative they and kids like them will be captivated by, while retaining the Nigerian creativity that sparked the project in the first place, through the travel photography?
This was the subject of a workshop we held at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in April 2016, as we sat down with a group of talented young sound designers, animators, production designers and digital content designers to discuss how to turn ‘Osogbo’s Feet’, as we had titled our story, into a reality.
We began by watching the video of our children’s workshop, and Ayodeji Alaka outlined the storyline as it had emerged from the children’s imaginations. He highlighted some of the themes and challenges he saw in the story: to make the forest of Osogbo the forest of a child’s imagination, and the mean beasts and kind spirits the people who populate it. The beasts of the forest are parent-type figures who have power over Osogbo’s Feet and Squiggly Tree. Osogbo’s Feet wants to flee — to explore a bigger world out there.
Our initial plan had been to storyboard a narrative arc for the story. But discussion, drawing on the experience and enthusiasm of our NFTS team, quickly took us into bigger questions of narrative ownership. Shouldn’t we be trying to be as true to the children’s vision as possible, rather than ‘adultising’ it through our own storyboarding? At the same time, how do we bring the story to its fullest potential, while necessarily carrying out some acts of translation of the children’s ideas as we help the story evolve from verbal to visual?
Furthermore, how do we make sure we retain the links to the grove of Osun Osogbo, and to the work of photographer Amaize Ojeikere? We watched a video about Osun Osogbo to explain the historical, religious and cultural context behind the photographs and the story. It is important to us that everyone working on the project understands the significance of the grove in its own right, and that it doesn’t become homogenised as ‘Africa’ or as simply the ‘exotic’. We also discussed whether there could be ways of paying homage to the novels of the great Yoruba novelist D.O. Fagunwa, who similarly wrote fantastical stories about forest quests and animal kingdoms.
Another challenge we encountered was the gendered nature of the children’s narrative. Their workshopped story had included a character called ‘Squiggly Tree’, implicitly female, who was rescued by the male chief protagonist. If we stayed true to the children’s vision in this way, would we be suggesting that a woman necessarily needs a man to rescue her? The group discussed ways of editing the story so that it was not the captive fairytale story, or maybe made gender neutral. It was fascinating to reflect on how even young children — in this case, the 7–11 year olds who had participated in our workshop — had already picked up on our society’s gender norms, even in the relatively liberal environment of London.
Colin Clark, our digital content producer, reminded us of the importance of always taking our audience into account, and thinking about what they would take away from it.
The group also reminded us of the importance of taking the practicalities into consideration. After much discussion, we were all in agreement that the time is now ripe to come up with a firm, clear vision of what the end product will actually be. A film, an animation, a game, a pop-up book? Where would an audience come across it? At film festivals, in the cinema, as an app? And crucially, who would we pitch it to? In the current economic climate, funders always need to see return on their investment in any creative product. The group pointed out that the unique selling point of our story is that it stems from children’s own imaginations.
There’s plenty of work left for us to do as we make ‘Osogbo’s Feet’ come to life, but we feel ever more confident that there is a space for stories stemming from African creativity, mediated through the imagination of children all over the world. Our next step is a workshop at Africa Writes on Sunday 3 July, to discuss our ideas with a community of African story lovers. Please join us!
Thanks to:
Amalie Vilmar — Directing Animation
Anita Bruvere — Directing Animation
Breen Turner — Sound Designer
Nigel Woodford — Sound Designer
Felipe Bolano — Sound Designer
Damian Galan Alvarez — Production Designer
Colin Clark — Producer
Nicki Lang — Tela Films
Tadhg Culley — Screen Writer
William Samaha — Film Director
Emilio Pascual — Sound Recordist & Mixer
