“Poetry in Boxes” Project
The project won second prize in the 2025 educational initiative competition organised by the 5 Senses for Kids Foundation.
Project and context
“Poetry in Boxes” is a proposal from the Y Company.
Children are invited by an actor to open boxes of different shapes, sizes and materials.
Inside, they discover a special object associated with a poem written on a page that the performer reads to them.
Some poems are funny, others sad, others difficult to understand…
But be careful, as the duration of the encounter (approximately 15 minutes) does not allow time to open all the boxes: you must therefore choose wisely…
Project objectives
Poetry in Boxes is an invitation to hear a language and poetic writing that is unusual to children’s ears.
While some poems tell a story, others play solely on sounds, repetitions, onomatopoeia, or even incomprehensible (and funny) meanings.
It is also an invitation to pay attention to detail, with small, unusual and poetic objects.
“Poetry in Boxes” aims to be a moment of listening and surprise.
At the end of the session, the poems can be given to the older children.
The project is aimed at all types of children. We can even imagine it being suitable for older classes (nursery and primary school). Due to the adaptability of the text corpus, it is very easy to imagine poems in foreign languages, or focused on a particular theme, after discussion with the schools concerned.
Copyright “Compagnie Y”
Timetable
We are planning rehearsals during the 2025/2026 school year in order to be able to offer the project to schools in 2026.
Impact of the project on children
Following the presentation of the project to children last June, and with feedback from school staff, we can list: Meeting with an actor, awareness of listening to a poetic text and awareness of the principle of a performance/reading.
The project was performed in front of 17 groups of children from 7 different schools last June. I was struck by how attentively the children listened (which was confirmed by the staff). Some children repeated the words in rhythm, applauded, etc. The performance really acted as a poetic “bubble” for about fifteen minutes in the children’s day.
