Man with a skate fish on his head by Lynda waterhouse

 The question we were considering was ‘Does modern art tell a story?’ We were lucky we had been given access to the Queens Gallery and the gifts given to the Queen by The Royal Academy in 2012.

‘We’ were twenty nine children from a Lambeth primary school and me. We stared at this drawing by John Bellany.

 ‘What can you see?’ I asked

A man with a mountain on his head.

A pirate with a home made hat

A man with a dead eye

Is that a stingray on his head? No it’s a skate I replied

Had the skate been blown out of the water by an explosion?

Was the man wearing the fish on his head to cure some terrible disease?

I wonder what they are saying to each other… I mused and the children wrote down some wonderful conversations.

Later on in the session we encountered this image created by Basil Beattie. Again I asked, ‘What can you see?’

There were twenty nine different answers including three sail boats, a tent, a prison searchlight, a doorway to the land of dreams, three old fashioned hats, a shark, a planetarium, the inside of a robot, a magical road, three Japanese bowls with a chip in them, the entrance to a secret cave.

Shall I tell you? I said pausing and milking the moment for dramatic effect…You are all right. The gasp of delight made my day. I'm still smiling now. What can you see?

Heart of the Great Alone by Lynda Waterhouse

As writers how much attention should we pay to the emotional journey we taking our readers on? Do we have a moral obligation to care about our reader's feelings? Or is the telling of the story paramount and hang the consequences.

I was brought up knowing the story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his ill fated journey to the South Pole. He was one of the star turns in my Grandpa’s book of heroes and heroines. On TV I watched the 1948 black and white movie ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ starring John Mills.Years later it was the adventures of another explorer, Ernest Shackleton that stirred my imagination as I watched the silent film 'South' accompanied by Neil Brand’s haunting music.

At the moment at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, there is an exhibition of Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic photography. I find this collection of black and white photographs taken in the first part of the 20^th century incredibly moving and inspiring but will 21^st century children feel the same?

Fellow author Bridget Crowley and I are currently leading creative writing sessions in the gallery for children between the ages of 7-11years. The children respond to selected photographs and we set them a series of writing tasks.

Then we move on to Captain Scott and The British Antarctic Expedition 1910 -1913. Most of the children have not heard about him and there is an awful moment as they gaze at the final photograph and they realise that this group of weary men ‘were destined never to return from the heart of the great alone’

Some children are upset.We move back into the education room and ask them to express their feelings in a letter to Captain Scott. Some children go back in time and rewrite history rescuing him. Others tell him about what is happening in the Antarctic now and thank him for the scientific samples that he sent back. Some just tell him they feel sad.

It just doesn’t feel right to end the session at this point so we tell them about the fate of one of the dogs that was washed overboard and then immediately washed back again!

( Spoiler Alert – if you a bringing a school group PLEASE don’t give any of this away)

These sessions have been a stark reminder to me to pay attention to the emotional journey in my own writing and that strong emotions need to be handled with care and discharged appropriately before the story ends.

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=56

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/media/pdf/hotga-schools-for-web.pdf