Handprint CARE Storytelling through Picture Stories

Resource for inspiring classroom practices

This Handprint CARE educational resource section has a set of picture stories as starting points for students to share examples that ‘show us the way’ to a more just, positive and hopeful future.  Refer to chapter 4 on Learning with Real-World Stories to use this part to integrate it in your teaching learning process with students.

An ancient form of storytelling through art/pictures called Kamishibai, or paper drama, was famous during the 12^th century, in Buddhist temples across Japan. Earlier, monks used e-maki or picture scrolls to tell moral stories to people. This traditional form of storytelling evolved over the centuries into the use of beautifully illustrated boards by the Kamishibai storyteller.

Kamishibai came back successfully during the world-wide depression of 1920s and 30s. Unemployed storytellers were able to earn a small income through their story telling. Kamishibai became a huge form of learning and entertainment for children until the 1950s when television gained popularity.

In Africa storytelling was an important part of learning, sharing and entertainment between generations. Stories were popular amongst children and these were often interspersed with poetry and song. Start-up picture-stories in this section raise questions in different ways. The stories remain open-ended to invite handprint learning in action-orientated re-imaginings that can, in the words of African poet and storyteller Gcina Mhlope (2021): Touch the past with our memories, (to) feel the future flying on the wings of imagination. Use of picture stories were also taken up in Mexico by young students and, of course, India also has a tradition of stories that challenge ethical thinking and practices.

Story-sharing work with photo and picture sequences allowed us to identify how images and stories can be at the root of students developing transformative agency through Handprint CARE as an ethics-led learning to change. While developing Handprints for Change handbook, we came to realise that pictures are not only 'worth a thousand words' but they invite students learning school subjects to journey in evaluative story sharing into new worlds of positive future possibilities. These are not only social imaginaries for better futures for people and planet, but futures that their action learning brings into reach.

The five picture story sequences that follow is developed as examples of 'real life start-up stories.' These stories invite sharing and completion as they are open-ended and incomplete in many ways. Subject teaching work with the picture stories that follow can activate learners to re-imagine how things are and could be. Each of the stories can be used to inspire and activate inquiry and Handprint action learning through which students can compose their own real-life true stories that 'point the way' (uMkhomba ndlela) to more just and sustainable lifestyles.

Download Picture Stories