The Clarinet Clue Stories

The Clarinet Clue Stories were created in July 2010 by children at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children with Studio Weave and clarinetist Kazia Smith.

The Slow Red Squid Meets A One Legged Snake

Once upon a time there was a slow red squid speeding along in the jungle.

Suddenly, he saw a pink noisy snake with one leg. He thought to himself, “Hmm that’s boring, I’m going to take him home and put more legs on him.”

The pink noisy snake said: “Go away! I have quite enough legs.”

Then a hummer with big wheels came to try and run them over but they used the snake venom to puncture the tires. The hummer was pushed outside and blew up. The slow red squid and the pink noisy snake went to bed and dreamt of the hummer coming back with bigger tires but it was just a dream.

THE END

The Mysterious Egyptian Lady Gives Away Her Power

Once upon a time there was a medium height friendly Egyptian lady. One day, she was wandering along a sun-kissed cobbled stone path when suddenly she saw lots of big wild dogs chasing a multi-coloured rat. She quickly swept up the rat with her skirt and hid it in her straw basket.

The dogs stared at the Egyptian woman with fury in their eyes. Mysteriously, they were stunned still on the outside but on the inside, their eyes were furious. The rat peaked out from inside the basket, laughed at the dogs and skipped away.

The dogs had been turned to stone but they were starting to crack. They could just turn their heads enough to see that the rat was controlling them because the Egyptian lady had given the multi-coloured rat the power. In the distance, the Egyptian lady was walking away, her skirt swaying.

THE END

The Blue Piggy’s Party

Once upon a time, there was a smooth blue piggy sliding around.

He was sleeping, but not quietly for he was dreaming of…

…a party with tigers, cows, cats…

…a football team of sheep…

…a football team of blue frogs, and lots of bunnies all wearing party hats. Suddenly, a loud noise made by boys and girls hitting and pointing at each other, woke the piggy up. The piggy angrily ran away. He kept running and running until he got to…

…a quiet muddy forest in Japan with penguins.

The penguins were very pleased to see the piggy and together they played tag on sledges made of water pads in the mud, and made mud men. Suddenly seven baby baddie piglets came along and knocked them off their sledges with a thousand mud balls.

The blue piggy was very cross so he stomped over to the white piglets and kicked them because they’d been naughty. Then the blue and yellow daddy pig came over and told the piglets to say sorry. The piglets did say sorry and all the animals from the piggy’s dream came and found him and they all had a party together with colourful, feathery party hats.

THE END

Playrooms
Royal Hospital for Sick Children

with the Play Specialists at the RHSC, Edinburgh and the Sick Kids Friends Foundation (2010)

Studio Weave were asked to look at the playrooms as part of the develeopment of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children which was due to be re-built on the southern edge of Edinburgh. The new facility would provide world class healthcare for children and young people from all over Scotland.

Our proposal was for each playroom to have its own identity as an imaginary place / city / landscape, so we designed a game to experiment with ways to collectively invent an imaginary world while taking into account the practicalities of working with children in hospital.

The workshops resulted in some fantastic outcomes which were to be developed into imaginary cities that created a bright, engaging world at the same time as providing much needed storage.

Each imaginary city could be closed or open. When closed it would be neatly out of the way and the space would be clear for other uses.

When open, it would allow elements to roam away from the storage base and out into the playroom or ward or even beyond, perhaps outdoors.

Each city would fit into it’s playroom as suits the layout of the room and would be detailed in a similar way to a fitted kitchen, with surfaces that can withstand frequent cleanable and robust structures that are secure and longlasting.

The imaginary play cities could also lend themselves to realisation through complementary audio visuals. Techniques that would be explored include video painting, video mapping, interactive projections and audio clips. Images could be projected onto walls, ceilings, window blinds, or with video mapping and interactive media, onto objects in the room.