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This video captures the everyday rhythms of my local park. The swaying trees, open sky, laughter of children, and distant sounds of families and birds create a layered soundscape. What may seem ordinary — footsteps, giggles, and background chatter — becomes extraordinary when noticed closely. For me, this moment highlights how place itself participates in play, offering sound, movement, and drama. This artefact is the foundation for my creative and analytical responses, showing how natural and social elements blend into a living performance.

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Creative Response – Dramatic Storytelling

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Creative Response – Dramatic Storytelling

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This creative response reimagines my park visit through the lens of a child’s imagination. Performed as dramatic storytelling with added background music, the piece invites the listener to experience the park as a stage where trees become castle towers, birds become a choir, footsteps become drums, and the sky transforms into a theatre curtain. By combining the temporal arts of sound/music and drama, I aimed to capture the rhythm, atmosphere, and playfulness of the environment. This response reflects how ordinary sounds and movements can become extraordinary through deep listening and imagination, supporting children’s creative play in natural spaces.

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My On-Country visit to a nearby park became an encounter with sound, movement, and drama in ways I had not anticipated. At first glance, the park appeared ordinary: trees swaying, families sitting together, children running across the grass, birds calling overhead, and faint music drifting from a speaker. Yet as I slowed down and allowed myself to experience the place more deeply, I became attuned to its layers of sensory richness. The smell of freshly cut grass, the feel of the breeze on my skin, the rhythmic pattern of footsteps, and the chorus of laughter and birdsong blended into what felt like a performance. The park was not a backdrop but a participant, shaping my feelings of calm, joy, and nostalgia. This sensory and emotional engagement laid the foundation for both my artefact—a short video capturing the atmosphere of the park—and my creative response, a dramatic storytelling piece narrated as though through the eyes of a child and layered with background music. Together, these artefacts demonstrate how everyday environments can be transformed into poetic and pedagogical experiences.

The act of creating the dramatic storytelling response highlighted the interconnections between sound, movement, and drama. Although the response exists as an audio piece, all three arts languages were present. Sound was captured in the layering of background music with my narration, as well as in the rhythm of words that echoed the footsteps, laughter, and birdsong I had experienced. Movement was suggested through imagery—the trees swaying like dancers, children running in playful choreography, and the wind carrying voices through the air. Drama formed the heart of the response, as I performed the role of a child transforming the park into a stage where every object carried imaginative significance. Trees became castle towers, birds a choir, and the sky a theatre curtain. Through this lens, the park was not static but alive, co-creating stories and games.

This process strongly resonates with Ruth Wilson’s (2007) argument that natural environments act as catalysts for creativity and imaginative play. She suggests that children engage most freely and meaningfully when they are immersed in open-ended outdoor spaces. My experience confirmed this perspective, as I witnessed how the ordinary actions of children in the park—running, laughing, shouting—took on musical and dramatic qualities. These were not structured performances but spontaneous expressions of imagination, where the environment itself offered possibilities for invention. The children’s footsteps became percussion, their voices a melody, their movements a form of dance. By noticing and reinterpreting these elements in my creative response, I enacted Wilson’s view that natural settings encourage children to see new possibilities in their world.

The idea of attunement to place is also deepened by Pauline Oliveros’ (2016) distinction between hearing and listening. Oliveros argues that hearing is passive, while listening is active, embodied, and intentional. She describes listening as a form of attention that allows place itself to be experienced as a kind of instrument in the composition of life. This was transformative for me. At first, I simply heard the background noise of the park—bird calls, footsteps, conversations. But as I reflected more deeply, I shifted into active listening. I began to perceive the way these sounds intertwined, forming a living soundscape that was at once chaotic and harmonious. In my creative response, this insight shaped the way I narrated the park: not as a collection of separate objects, but as a unified performance where every sound, movement, and gesture was part of a larger composition. Oliveros’ eco-music philosophy helped me understand that the park was not just the setting of the performance—it was an active collaborator in the creation of meaning.

Ruth Wilson (2018) extends this perspective by emphasising how creative engagement with nature fosters ecological awareness and responsibility. She argues that when children are invited to experience nature as magical and alive, they develop deeper respect and care for it. My own reflection resonated with this view. By framing the park as a stage, where trees, birds, and sky played active roles, I came to appreciate the environment not only as a source of aesthetic experience but as something deserving of attention and care. For children, this type of imaginative engagement has the potential to nurture ecological responsibility, as they come to see the natural world as a participant in their play rather than a backdrop to it. My creative response aimed to capture this sense of partnership between humans and nature, highlighting the way place itself can be understood as a co-creator of stories and games.

This experience has clear implications for my future practice in early childhood education. The Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009) highlights the importance of creativity, belonging, and connection to nature. My reflection demonstrates how outdoor environments naturally provide opportunities for children to engage in the temporal arts, not as isolated curriculum areas but as interconnected modes of expression. Educators can support this by designing experiences that invite children to record and remix natural sounds into collaborative soundscapes, choreograph movements inspired by trees or animals, or use dramatic storytelling to reimagine their surroundings. Such practices not only foster creativity and imagination but also encourage children to listen deeply to place, cultivating ecological awareness. Oliveros’ distinction between hearing and listening is especially useful here, as it reminds educators to guide children toward intentional, embodied engagement with their environments. Wilson’s insights further reinforce that outdoor play is essential for fostering imagination and care, both of which are critical for children’s holistic development.

In conclusion, my On-Country visit to the park revealed how ordinary environments can become extraordinary through the temporal arts of sound, movement, and drama. The artefact and creative response together illustrate the poetic possibilities of everyday places, while the integration of theory deepened my understanding of how children and educators might approach such experiences. Drawing on Wilson’s (2007) view of natural settings as catalysts for play, Oliveros’ (2016) call for deep listening, and Ruth Wilson’s (2018) emphasis on ecological responsibility, I came to see the park as more than a space for recreation. It is a living stage, a partner in learning, and a source of both imaginative transformation and ethical awareness. For my future practice, this means embracing outdoor environments as vital pedagogical spaces where children and place co-create knowledge, creativity, and responsibility.

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I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live, study, and create — the [Bunurong People of the Kulin Nation]. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and I recognise that this land was, is, and always will be Aboriginal land. I acknowledge the deep spiritual and cultural connections that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have with Country, and I honour their ongoing role as custodians of land, waters, skies, and stories.

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References (APA 7th)

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR]. (2009). Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Commonwealth of Australia.

Oliveros, P. (2016). The difference between hearing and listening [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/_QHfOuRrJB8

Wilson, R. (2007). Children, creative play, and the natural environment. In R. Wilson (Ed.), Nature and young children: Encouraging creative play and learning in natural environments (pp. 1–18). Routledge.

Wilson, R. (2018). Nature and young children: Encouraging creative play, learning and development (3rd ed.). Routledge.