Media Planet at Byline Festival
With a plethora of stories to be told and adventures to be explored your festival becomes the news. The House of Fairy Tales is creating children’s tent at Byline Festival into “Media Planet” a playful dispatch office (complete with ringing phones, busy type writers, the Living Wall of incoming news, and a stage framed as a television).
Media Planet would be a children’s activity hub from which during the day they will be engaged in creative playful activities based within or just outside the tent, (with room to incorporate the writing workshops already scheduled):
✎ Sport, fashion, comedy and news (if not history) will be made during led sessions
✎ The office will always need to be ‘manned’ with phones to answer, reports to be typed or illustrated, forms to be stamped and general game play to be had
✎ With the news not writing itself Media Planet will give young people missions to engage with around the festival in order to find the latest and greatest news stories, and event reviews of the festival fun.
The day’s investigations, imaginations and discoveries will then be presented in our interactive Six O’Clock Show, live on stage, where the day’s news will be combed over and mixed with a healthy dose of creative mayhem and audience participation.
The news and views of your youngest festival goers will then be published online in our inter-dimensional playper: The HofT Examiner, for a child’s eye view of the weekend and a precious memento for the next generations’ budding journalists and their grown-ups
OUTWARD BOUND WORSKHOPS AND GAMES
Tim Ireland, Director of Youthful Enthusiasm, will be running a series of workshops aimed at teenagers, young adults and the young at heart, including:
Water Rocket Science: Design and build your own 2L water 'bottle rocket' to compete in our launch challenge on a 100m range. Every rocket built will be launched on a 45-degree trajectory at 45 psi. What happens next, including how far you get, is up to you.
The Obstacle Course Course: Learn how to build a 'spider web' obstacle course with nothing but string and a few bells and whistles, then challenge all comers to take it on.
Night Games: Join us for a lighthearted game of hunting other humans in the woods. Hunters in each game will be armed with PlayStation guns converted into powerful torches. We will also have a very special smuggling game one night called 'War on Christmas': teams will build roughly 50-100 gifts in their colour, which they then smuggle into the woods and must fight to protect in a hostile, unregulated environment. Many valuable life lessons to be learned.
Story telling with Niamh
Niamh is a storyteller, a performer and a qualified teacher. She has been telling stories since dragons were there, at the drop of a hat and when asked. Niamh sees stories as a communication to ignite imagination and creativity – to entertain, educate and dream new ways and worlds.
As a trained actress, Niamh has performed on stage, TV and film. As a teacher she has taught drama for performance and speech and drama for qualification, as well as writing and directing bespoke plays for children.
Niamh’s stories have emerged from children to whom she is mother, auntie, cousin, or teacher. Her stories range from original creations to retakes on traditional tales. Stories are told with a performance and the engagement of her listeners – the children. Niamh opens her carpet bag and stories escape…
Join her at the Kids Activity area on Sat and Sun at 11:00-11:45!
Some of our friends from the Miss Byline Pageant will be at hand to provide extra entertainment for the festival's youngest guests, including Lion King sing-a-longs!
OTHER ACTIVITIES
There will be a range of other diversions and fun activities including our climbing wall with experienced instructors
