January 4, 2020, Saturday - Free First Saturday: Story Time at Walker Art Center

Time: 10 AM – 3 PM

Location: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place

Free First Saturday: Story Time

There are many ways to tell a story—through sound, music, words, images, movement, and more! This January you are invited to celebrate stories in their multiple forms. Listen in or create your own.

Free First Saturdays feature free gallery admission on the first Saturday of every month, plus performances, games, art-making, and kids’ films from 10 am to 3 pm. Family friendly food options are available or bring something from home to snack on in the museum’s public spaces.

Art-Making Activity: Puppet Portraits
10 am–3 pm

Join actors and teaching artists from Speaking Out to make your own hand puppet using found materials. Create your character to bring to performances of School’s No Place for Kids or develop your own puppet show!

Performance: School’s No Place for Kids
10:30 am and 1 pm

School’s No Place for Kids is a 30-minute play performed by Speaking Out about how a spirited child and a by-the-book teacher find their way to the classroom from different places. Adventurous audience members are invited to join the actors onstage to reenact a favorite scene or re-envision the story following the show.

Performance: DJ Simone
11 am–1 pm and 2–3 pm

Bring the whole family to groove to funk, soul, house music, and more spun by DJ Simone! Tell your story through dance and movement.

Workshop: Songwriting Our Stories with Kashimana
11:30 am, 12:30 pm, and 1:30 pm

What is your story? Songwriting is a creative and fun way to share about who you are. Join local musician Kashimana to tell your story through music. Kashimana will lead three 30-minute drop-in workshops where families can work together to create a song. No previous experience required.

Gallery Tour
Join a Walker-trained educator on a participatory 45-minute tour for kids that will explore the idea of place. Meet in the Main Lobby.
English, 12 pm
Spanish, 1 pm

DJ Simone started her musical career at Macalester College, where she DJ-ed vinyl records on her own radio show for three years. She creates a musical experience inspired by an eclectic assortment of uplifting music. Along with being a DJ and producer, Simone is also a teacher, sharing knowledge, creativity, and instilling a love for music in her students.

Kashimana (“that is her heart”) is a singer-songwriter, composer, producer, lyricist, and artist with a rich soulful blues voice that soars through her original compositions, for which she writes both lyrics and music. Her songs are catchy and paint compelling stories of her experiences growing up in Nigeria and Kenya, traveling through Africa and Europe, and settling in the United States. Her goal is to help people share their own stories through song.

Speaking Out creates arts-based activities to nurture curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking for children and adults. This collective of working and teaching artists shares techniques communities can use to express themselves and dig into ideas that need attention. With puppets, plays, poems, songs and dance, they invite conversations and new creation.