One of the main tenets that runs through all the work of Luma Creations is taking Latin American culture and traditions to those who wouldn’t normally come across it. That is how the Storytelling Puppet Show Tour began, with a simple storyteller format, telling original stories for children that were based on traditional Latin American folklore and customs.
LUMA wanted to be more creative with this project, and with funding from Arts Council England (ACE) in 2019, delivered a new puppet show based on the story Little Ears, written by Oscar Carrasco, which was performed eight times in community libraries across Liverpool to primary aged children. Further ACE funding after the Coronavirus pandemic allowed us to develop a new puppet show based on the story Chio Chio, written by Francisco Carrasco, which was performed twenty-four times in community libraries across the Liverpool City Region to 1000 primary-aged children. When we gained ACE National Portfolio Organisation status, we were keen to carry on developing this project, and ACE was keen for us to take the work even further afield into more rural areas of the North West and to access children who were even less likely to get the opportunity to experience Latin American art and culture, let alone any kind of live performance.
And so the Chio Chio Storytelling Puppet Show tour was developed. It was difficult to cold call venues and organisations who didn’t know about our work, as for the first time we required some kind of financial commitment from those who took the show. So we chose to use the same strategy of working with libraries, who would, in turn, engage their local primary schools, and thanks to the contacts given by Denise Jones, one of our major partners from Liverpool Central Library, we narrowed down a programme for a short tour in Cheshire, Cumbria, and rural Wirral.
We have since delivered over ten performances in Frodsham, Workington, Carlisle, and Greasby, and we have performed to over 600 children, aged from 8 months to 11 years old, and wherein two instances every pupil from two different schools attended the performances. Although Chio Chio is a show for children to share the history and culture of Latin America, the show also has a central theme of environmental sustainability, on a local and global scale.
Chio Chio: The Storytelling Puppet Show Tour
Each performance was followed by a workshop for the children, which focused on the theme of sustainability, and we worked with them to identify sustainability issues and some ways of dealing with them. We would explain that one of the central themes of the play was that the villagers got so used to their bird being there every day for them, that they gradually began to take it for granted, and it was only when it was stolen from them, that they realised how important it was to their way of life.
We explained that this is the same with our local and global environments and their sustainability – we have got so used to things, that it is only when they are no longer there that we sit up and take any notice. The storytelling puppet show project will continue to develop, with the aim to tour shows across the whole of the North of England.
By P. Max Alder
