I love everything

This morning as I looked at Sina's reading homework I realised that we potentially have a little bit of a problem. Each book she reads she must rate out of ten.... I guess this is one way that the school starts to get kids to think about what they are reading and what makes a good story. However after giving the first 2 books a 5 out of 10 she has given the next 12 a nice round perfect ten..... Now I have to read these books as well and while they are not offensive in any way they are definitely not a ten! Not compared with some of the gems we have on our bookshelf.

Couple this with Sefo who either hates or loves everything with nothing in between, and we have an issue with how we are going to review any of the work at OOTB.

After chatting about this with Susan, who I am doing the presentation with on Wednesday night at the YPAA symposium, I had a good chat with Sina as we walked home from school about what we might think about when we are watching or participating in one of the OOTB shows.

We talked about some of the elements that may exist in the work - the acting, the sound design, the set, the music, the story and the list went on getting a little more ridiculous as the conversation developed. We started to talk about how we might like one aspect of this but think that another one wasn't so great or could have been done better.

It was a really interesting conversation and the ability to constructively review a work challenges one of the things that we teach our children very early on.... If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I think that the real key to this concept, obviously, is the word constructive, and whilst it is fun to totally bag something you really didn't like it isn't helpful for anyone. I think that this is a very sophisticated concept to grasp and when people get this is can be really empowering. The idea that your creative and cultural ideas are valuable and have relevance to the work that you are viewing is an amazing thing and I think will affect ever after the way that you view work.

As someone who has worked in the arts industry for a while I take it for granted that I have something to contribute to the cultural conversation and I hope that at the end of the process that the rest of my family feel this way as well.

I attempted to have some sort of conversation about this stuff with Sefo also... We started with, Do you remember OOTB? (He was about 16 months old the last time we went) Yes, he said. And what is it? I asked.... The answer - A great big present for me! Close enough I reckon...

Anyway Sina decided that she would write reports after each show (this may be a challenge as it is a pretty full on schedule!) and that we might interview Sefo, Fasa and Faysie to get their opinions.

We are very excited to be heading to the opening tomorrow night though I still have not tracked down the camera and I also forgot to buy the book, "Grug" so that we are ready for the show on Friday.... Best intentions and all of that.