Illustration © Nasaya Mafaridik 2020
Ahead of Empathy Day on Tuesday 9 June, we’ve been thinking about the “human superpower” of empathy: the ability to understand and share someone else’s feelings.
Empathy is a learned skill, and an essential one: it can break down boundaries, build compassion and understanding, and help us to create stronger communities.
In recent years, some fascinating research has highlighted the role that reading can play in helping us develop empathy from an early age. By enabling us to experience the world through another person’s eyes, fiction encourages us to look beyond our own perspective. It can help us to appreciate the feelings and thoughts of people in situations we may never experience ourselves – to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
Especially during difficult times, a well-chosen story or poem can also help us explore our own emotions and the feelings of the people around us.
Empathy Day: Read, Connect, Act
To mark Empathy Day this Tuesday, EmpathyLab will be hosting a full day of online events for children and young people, featuring some of the UK’s favourite authors and illustrators.
Along with sessions hosted by Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon, The Wizards of Once) and Malorie Blackman (Pig Heart Boy, Noughts and Crosses), Empathy Day will feature a poetry challenge, rhyme time, a drawing lesson with Rob Biddulph – and much more!
Check out the full programme here – and be sure to visit the event page from 9:30am on Tuesday to catch all the activities.
Worry Angels
Also on Tuesday 9 June, Sheffield Libraries’ Facebook page will feature an exclusive video and activity from award-winning children’s and YA author Sita Brahmachari.
Sita will read from her book Worry Angels, a wonderful story about gaining the courage to open up about our anxieties and learning to understand the struggles and emotions of the people around us.
We’ll also be providing a template to help children make their own “worry angels”.
You can watch the video and join in with the activity tomorrow on our Facebook page.
In the meantime, you can watch a brilliant stop motion animation based on Sita’s book here.
Craft a Special Message
Inspired by Empathy Day, our Children's Team has prepared a couple of great, simple activities to help children consider and connect with other people and their feelings.
If you'd like to share your messages with us, we'd love to see them on our Facebook and Twitter pages!
Looking for more creative ideas? EmpathyLab has also produced a great pack of family activities and crafts, available here.
Discover Read for Empathy Titles in our eLibrary
A number of the titles featured in EmpathyLab’s 2020 Read for Empathy Book Collections are now available to borrow from our eLibrary.
Many of these books explore the experiences of characters from a range of cultures and life circumstances. Others can help young readers reflect on difficult emotions such as anxiety and anger.
Writing for Wellbeing with Grimm & Co
Rotherham-based storytelling wizards Grimm & Co have brought their creative writing sessions online with a series of Writing for Wellbeing activities.
From meditation-based writing practices to tips on how to become a “Happiness Journalist”, these mindful exercises are designed to help children and young people write about how they and their friends and family are feeling during lockdown.
Check out all the activities here.
Creativity During Corona
Today's Library Spotlight has mainly focused on how fiction and creativity can help young readers appreciate and imagine another person's emotions.
But reading and writing remain a powerful means of "perspective-taking" at any age - and few things can immerse us in a writer's point-of-view so instantly and intimately as a great poem.
In today's Creativity During Corona post, Claire from Central Library has featured two fantastic poems: Miller Williams' Compassion and Mohja Kahf's My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears.
Visit our Facebook page to read the poems and try out a new set of creative writing exercises.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments (subject to moderation).