Kamishibai has been the starting point for many of our projects with young storytellers. The Japanese Storybox artform gives young people confidence to explore their stories, drawing their slides gives a depth of context to the scenes in the tales and gives the young people a fuller palette to draw upon in their tellings, enriching vocabulary and deepening their understanding of their material.

Find more about the Kamishibai technique and how to make your own kamishibai at…

make and use a Kamishibai
let’s create at home – Kamishibai

The project “Victorian Wellington” working with the Away With Words Young Storytelling Club at Wellington Library in Telford had two kamishibai as an output, one for the library, the other for the museum.

Many schools were being rebuilt in Wellington. One of the club members pointed out that her primary school had been demolished and her Secondary school was being rebuilt on a new site. She said that she felt rootless. The group decided to collect stories from their town’s heritage to reinforce their connection to their home town.

Mythstories led the group in researching Victorian tales of Wellington at the Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury and then used kamishibai to formulate the telling of their chosen tales which were then videoed on location for a DVD. The DVD was sent out to all the Primary Schools in the area so their pupils could also share in the tales, and the kamishibai in the library let other residents share in them too.

Here are links to the kamishibai slides featured in the Victorian Wellington Storybox…

Mrs Merrick
The Whist Hound
Honest John
The Death Bird
Tom Moody
Ercol and Wrekon
The White Lion of Whixall

In 2017 work experience student Lucasz added a further story to the collection, this was his favourite tale, a Japanese story of a shapeshifting fox-princess, not of course a story of Victorian Wellington, but as his telling was created for a performance at Wellington Library to the junior Away With Words Club the slides were designed to work with the side loading Kamishibai on site. The slides were a one-off and remain in the museum’s Kamishibai which now forms a part of the Mount Pleasant Primary School’s mini storytelling museum in Shrewsbury.

While we cannot share Lucasz’s slides and story with you here, we can share his work experience exit interview complete with a photo of his premiere performance below…

The Victorian Wellington project was Lottery Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund under the ‘young roots’ strand.