[-empyre-] Fwd: prototyping fairy tales (on behalf of Alexandra)

[Gabriel Menotti]

Alexandra made a mistake and send the message to my address! =) Here it goes.

best!
Menotti

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alexandra Antonopoulou <alexiantpc at yahoo.gr>
Date: 2010/3/22
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] prototyping fairy tales
To: Gabriel Menotti <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>


Hello to everybody,

I am Alexandra Antonopoulou and I am PhD candidate at Goldsmiths -
University of London as well as children books illustrator and writer.
My research theme is
'Story-making as a methodology for learning and designing. Creating
the future children stories through a partnership between children and
designers.'

I am focusing on the impact of the story-making process on children’s
learning. When I am referring to the term story-making I will not mean
only the conception of a story or the thinking up of  stories but also
the very act of designing and making using the ideas that fantasy can
offer.

In my case, the children rewrite and reillustrate fairytales creating
contemporary versions based on their own experiences. This enables
them learn about design and be given voice as moralizers. They have
also to design a new medium that would host their stories. Therefore,
the children use the story-making tool for design (a tool that I have
created) to use fiction as a starting point for prototyping an
appropriate object to host for their stories.

The making and prototyping acts as a way to bring their fictional
scenarios in life and translate them in terms of design objects. So
modelling acts as the materialization of fantasy and play scenarios.

Looking forward to your confusions questions and comments.

All the best,
Alexandra Antonopoulou