ABSTRACT
My initial interest in using the device of story to interpret art began when teaching my class of Year 5 children about the works of some Victorian artists. This was part of a humanities project on the Victorians. It fascinated me that certain artists used very clear images in their work to convey a story with a message to the observer. I noticed that the children looked very closely at the paintings to try to fathom out the stories behind them. This device appeared to give the children the chance to interpret what they saw and make it part of their understanding of the Victorian period and some of its art. When I was planning the North West Coast project I wondered if, by using the same format with artefacts in the Sainsbury Collection, the children would offer the same kinds of response, as these are different kinds of objects, from a distinctly different culture. I realised that the Victorian painters wanted the observer to interpret their work in ways which were part of ‘our’ culture.
