Talking with Shadows Workshops

The City of Melbourne’s ArtPlay, a leading driver in nurturing bold art and innovative digital creative experiences for children and their families, has partnered with established Australian artist, Jessica Wilson and Korea’s Factory of Contemporary Arts (FoCA), to unveil a suite of creative and ambitious workshops designed to remove language barriers and build artistic bridges between children from Australia and Korea.

Jessica Wilson brings her highly acclaimed Child Nation project to the City of Melbourne, and has collaborated with ArtPlay and FoCA to translate three of the experiences into Korean. From Child Nation, technology is used as a vehicle for children to participate in playful interactions with their own places, at their own pace and with their own ideas.

Underpinned by inclusivity, creativity and collaboration, ArtPlay works with children to build new performances and exciting worlds, as well as co-creating with adult artists. It allows children to drop into a creative play mode and riff with their own places, opening up a whole new way of seeing things.
The result is a smorgasbord of creativity and artistry to share and explore amongst young minds, discovering new and innovative forms of imaginative expression.

8300 kilometres will not stop a group of imaginative and inspired children in the ArtPlay building in Melbourne to connect with a group of children in Jeonju, Korea.

Using a large projection screen and multiple cameras, the challenge will be to have a conversation without any spoken language.

As part of Cultural Diversity Week, artist GiJong Yu in Korea and Jessica Wilson have co-designed this inventive and unique workshop using a suite of technology and physical play in sharing the young participants’ shadows and ideas.

“We are taking away language as a form of communication and replacing it with physical responses to each other and the different buildings they are in, so that these children can engage in a totally new kind of imaginative conversation,” Jessica Wilson said.

“The exciting challenge presented to us when creating Talking with Shadows was that I didn’t speak Korean and GiJong Yu in Korea couldn’t speak English so we were in a unique situation where we needed an interpreter to exchange ideas and workshop the concepts. We are thrilled with what we discovered together and now we can share with children.”