Sustaining Stories of the Seas
Sustaining Stories of the Sea facilitates intergenerational meetings and collabrative narratives between young children and the elderly in connection with the ocean.
Through art activities, local field trips, conversations with local elders, and deep hanging out activities by the sea, the project employs different methods of generating narratives in collaboration among the children, kindergarten teachers, researchers, local elders, and the children’s families. One aspect of these collaborative narratives highlights the opportunities for different generations to engage in sustaining traditional and creating new knowledge and cultures among and across generations.
Which stories lie by the village of Klokkarvik? What insights and knowledge are elicited when these stories are shared between young children and the elderly?
A community by the sea
The Øygarden landscape is a coastal landscape with a cultural history back to the end of the ice age, with traces of life from the stone age, the Middle Ages, and the Vikings as well as memorials and museums of War and local culture. Also, today the local community lives by and from the North sea, there are small farms and fisheries, salmon farms, and the central Norwegian gas and petroleum industry.
The sea is easily accessible for the local population, their kindergarten and schools, as well as for boat guests and fishery tourism. In the village of Klokkarvik, the local neighbouring group is vital, and some of the old adults in the village are eager to share stories, knowledge and engage with the children and staff in the kindergarten.
Collaborative narratives
Stories and storytelling are powerful cultural artifacts, being told and retold they name the world and transmit values, heroes, and emergent ocean literacy. Intergenerational place-based collaborative narratives by the sea offer glimpses of lived experiences from a perspective of sustainable pedagogy for the future. However, intergenerational experiences by the sea are often overlooked and under-researched as an enrichment to the early years of education. This is something this project wants to adress.
How can local landscapes and biotopes be explored and expressed through art and stories?
In utilizing the concept of collaborative narratives this research aims to create opportunities for different generations to engage in sustaining traditional and creating new knowledge, and cultures among and across generations. In doing so, local experiences are shared through narratives that are cultural artifacts for meaning-making and exploration.
Researchers
