Family Day: Folklore - Quiet Hour

Join us for a more relaxed experience this Family Day, one hour before the main event. Booking required.

This event is for families with children and young people with additional support needs who would benefit from a quieter, more relaxed session.

Children and caregivers must book tickets per person attending.

Led by artists Ruby Campion and Yanaëlle Ritter, we will explore historic and contemporary Sussex folktales through activities that take over the gallery. Activities will include storytelling, performance, shadow-play and giant imagined landscapes. Learn all about the wonderful tales of Sussex and create your own.

Recommended for ages 5+

You can find more information on the activities below. 

Studio 1:

Add to our giant interactive map, creating tales within this fantasy landscape inspired by our relationship with the natural spaces around us.

Materials: Air-dry clay, watercolours/food colouring, charcoal, scrap paper

Pack Sussex foraged materials to take to the other activations across the gallery and through some of our found folklores.

Materials: Foraged natural objects and calico

This is a wet space, we will provide coveralls but we advise wearing messy clothes. Leave any wet materials to dry here before leaving the space.

Cinema Foyer - Quiet Space:

Pack for your journey here, what key elements will you need? Use our drawing tools to depict the most important things to you and your family. Will it be lavender for calm, pumpkins for strength or plums for protection?

Materials: Sticks, charcoal, chalk, scrap paper

This is a designated quiet space, please be respectful of other families in this area. There are sofas and lowered lighting in this area.

Staircase:

As you travel up the stairs and back in time, look for the folktales and prompts to start your journey.

Gerard Byrne - Gallery 1:

Explore the animals historically linked with Sussex folktales. Use the puppets and torches in the space to create your own show, put on the wearable costumes to become the animal and take on it’s characteristics or create a token with the materials to take those characteristics on through your journey.

Materials: Foraged natural objects, string, preprepared puppets and costumes and torches.

This is a low-lit area with limited seating, there will be picnic blankets to work on and participants are welcome to use foldable chairs as required.

Ravilious and Collection Library - Quiet Space:

Write your own folktale which takes place in Sussex, involves real animal or mythical creature, and plant or type of food that helps you on their journey.

If you don’t want to write or draw your story, use the talking tins to tell it and leave it for the next person to find!

Materials: Paper, pencils and talking tins.

This is a designated quiet space, please be respectful of other families in this area.

Corridors - Level 1 and 2:

Take a moment to create a quick sculpture and display it on one of our plinths or display the works you’ve already made there. Take a photo and tag us!

Materials: Any you’ve brought with you!

Level 2 Corridor:

Respond to the drawing prompts on the wall or create a sculpture out of the materials, food and works you’ve packed and made along your journey, add to our collective display!

Materials: Willow hoops, yarn and any materials you’ve brought with you!

Lift:

It’s time to travel back home! Look for creative movement and drawing prompts to bring you back to the present.

Foyer under the stairs:

Leave a one world response to today’s session using the paper, pencils and pegs.

Ruby is a multidisciplinary artist whose creative practice explores the use of storytelling to reshape our relationship with the world around us, particularly the natural environment. They engage with objects and artefacts, working to question conventional hierarchies of usefulness, embracing materials subject to change and decay over time, reconnecting with natural cycles and processes of change.

They are a recent graduate from the University of Brighton Fine Art course where their study focused on sculpture, process, and performance; exploring sense of place and meaning through movement with found objects and puppetry work. They have developed and supported workshops centring experimental play and found objects as well as practical techniques in ceramics and painting.

Currently, their practice is moving towards artworks offered as gifts to places, people, and communities as opposed to work intended for conventional gallery spaces.

ruby (@gluemuseum) • Instagram photos and videos

Yanaëlle Ritter is a contemporary dance artist based in Eastbourne. As a choreographer and performer, she often collaborates with musicians and creates dances for specific sites like parks, beaches, or outdoor artworks such as the Dance Diagonal mural at Towner. Teaching dance is at the core of Yanaëlle’s practice. She facilitates creative contemporary dance classes for children, teenagers and adults across London and Sussex, for organisations including Sadler’s Wells, The Place, Trinity Laban and Eastbourne Dance Space. Yanaëlle also co-directs Company Concentric, a circle of collaborators with whom she designs and delivers performances, events and community projects.

Yanaëlle Ritter (Thiran) (@yanaelledanse) • Instagram photos and videos

We will be offering two designated quiet areas for families and groups who would prefer a more relaxed experience. This are indicated above and will be clearly signposted on the day.

We have sensory bags including noise-cancelling headphones and fidgets available to collect from the ground floor foyer to use for your visit.

Extra noise cancelling headphones are available to collect from Studio 1 for the duration of your visit.