“I think it showed me that children can take control of a story rather than always listening” – Teacher

“We love your garden almost as much as you do… we love playing in your garden, if you don’t let us in we’ve got nowhere to play” – Participant to giant

Into the Garden is an exciting programme for pupils from Years 1 and 2 which explores emotional literacy and imaginative play through storytelling and hands-on shadow play.

Using Oscar Wilde’s original tale of The Selfish Giant as our inspiration, we have adapted the material to engage children in examining what sharing and playing together means in practice. The shadow play in the programme has been developed as an exciting theatrical stimulus for children’s participation; they get to make it and, as an art form which has lots of possibilities, they get to explore it.

For Into the Garden, Clive Chandler was our specialist consultant. Clive is a well established puppet practitioner of over twenty years experience who has organised, performed in and directed many major puppets events and who was also a founder member of Big Brum theatre-in-education company.