This past weekend, Harbourfront Centre commissioned me to conceptualize and run an interactive story room as part of their free yearly festival called GeekOUT! for kids ages 5-12. Here’s the event description:

What would a story written and/or drawn by a thousand people look like? Inspired by “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” books, author Emily Pohl-Weary will help you create a story on the walls of an entire room! Add to other people’s ideas and characters to create one amazing story!

We had so much fun! For anyone who wasn’t there, check out the photos, taken earlier in the weekend, and later on…

Here’s the story that developed around Willow Dawson’s central image of two superheroes (click on the images below for larger versions):

Here’s the story that developed around her image of a flower-eating Tyrannosaurus:

And here’s the third one, of three kids watching TV:

People added to them throughout the two days. A couple kids even decided to use free walls to start their own stories. Here’s one of them, as it looked when it first went up, then later on:

Here are a couple shots of the room at work:

My idea was to find out what a Choose Your Own Adventure written by hundreds of kids would look like — anyone remember those books? I used to love reading them, then reading them again and again to get different endings. I’m convinced they were the precursors to the Internet, with their hyperlink-like choices…