Henderson

Primary Students

with Artist Tami Murray

Intermediate Students

with Artist Monica Cheema

I’ve had the privilege of continuing a storytelling and art-making journey with the students at John Henderson and ŠXʷƏXʷAʔƏS Thunderbird Elementary. This year, we continued to explore how stories guide us through life, particularly during challenging times. For children aged 5–10, stories are more than just words; they are the foundation of how they understand who they are and who they can become.

Each child carries their own story, a personal narrative that grows alongside them. Sometimes, their inner voice—the narrator of their journey—can get stuck in the tough parts of their story, focusing on fears or setbacks. These feelings are natural, as humans are wired to notice challenges to stay safe. However, we can teach children to shift their perspective.

Instead of seeing themselves as passive characters in their stories, they can become the heroes. Heroes face difficulties too, but what makes them remarkable is how they respond—growing stronger, making choices, and overcoming obstacles. By changing how they tell their stories, children can focus on their resilience, courage, and hope, transforming hardships into opportunities for growth and self-discovery.

During our six-week sessions, we explored inner dialogue, discussed tools for navigating challenges, and brainstormed ideas for art pieces reflecting these themes. Student’s wrote a story about inner strength, planned their artwork, and learned how to create relief images by adding and removing clay on tiles. Through practice with plasticine clay, they translated two-dimensional ideas into forms with depth and shape. Guided by the "4 S's" of clay attachment, students problem-solved when their creations didn’t go as planned, using the very tools they had discussed for overcoming challenges.

To conclude our sessions, students displayed bravery and generosity by sharing their stories and artwork with the divisions. I was deeply inspired by their courage in discussing how they find inner strength during tough times. These heartfelt discussions and their beautifully crafted clay tiles brought the Henderson community’s resilience and creativity to life.

This project invited students at Henderson to engage in a quiet, imaginative dialogue with the land—beginning not with speaking, but with listening. Rooted in early archival photographs from pre-settlement times, students were first asked to sit in silence and consider what sounds might have once echoed in these now-static landscapes. From this stillness emerged hand-drawn sound maps—rich with birdsong, wind, and water—tracing the imagined natural soundscapes of the past.

As the weeks unfolded, the process deepened. Students began to collage onto the archival images, visually expressing both the changes the land has endured and the sounds they had "heard" in their imaginative listening. This act of layering—both visual and conceptual—allowed students to grapple with the ongoing impacts of colonialism and climate change, reflecting a growing eco-anxiety as well as a sense of connection and care for the more-than-human world.

In the final phase, students brought their imagined soundscapes to life through Foley, crafting sounds from scratch with everyday materials. Some mimicked bird calls using only their hands, others carefully crumpled paper to capture the subtle crackle of fire, or tapped fingers rhythmically against wood to echo footsteps through forest undergrowth. These small, focused gestures became powerful acts of attention— transforming everyday materials into portals of memory, imagination, and presence.

Emergent and process-driven, this project treated silence as a generative space and filmmaking as a way to feel through the layers of time. Through collage, sound, and stop-motion, students explored how we might give voice to what has long been unheard—and how we might reimagine our relationship to land, history, and each other.