During the Golden Age of the 1930’s, families would gather together around the flickering vacuum tube of an old radio, waiting for those first eerie notes of the “Shadow” to begin. For the next forty-five minutes, they would be transported on an adventure of imagination. Last summer, we decided that we wanted to reinvent that style of storytelling by creating our own radio drama following our favorite themes of ghost stories & fairy tales!

In 2022, we were generously awarded a project impact grant from the California Arts Council. For this grant project, we had a vision of bringing a bit of the Museum of Make Believe directly into people’s homes and providing hands-on arts projects. First, we worked with our wonderful designer from Creative Blue Yonder to create a box that could be transformed into a piece of art.

Our miniature artist and long-time Disney fan, Geoff Mitchell, has found some of the same inspiration that Walt himself found. When in Chicago after graduating from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Geoff frequented the Thorne Miniature Rooms. He felt a bit of the Disney magic in them and Geoff was especially excited to learn about Walt Disney's own fascination with these rooms.

It wasn’t much larger than a shoebox. The polish on the wood had mostly rubbed off with age and it left behind a honeyed wood stained with the oil of fingerprints. A thick layer of dust was across the top. He blew on it and then reached for the brass clasps holding it shut. It almost felt like something alive was in it, humming with energy and vibration.

Some of us sit up nights under an itchy blanket, holding a flashlight, turning page after page, being transported into a magical new world hoping our parents won’t catch us. Some of us tell fantastical tales with big hand gestures and booming voices. Others use the arc of bright red paint or golden light shining through a shutter, even the steaming crackle of oil in a pan, to tell our story. All of us have a tale to tell, most of us have more than one whether we realize it or not. And at night, all of us continue to tell stories in our dreams while we sleep.

Even as a young boy living on a farm in Virginia, Larry Hicks loved books. There was something magical about the cracking open of that leather spine, the smell of the musty pages, and the tiny black words that could transport him to a world beyond the itchy hay bale that he sat on in the summer sun. As he grew older, he dreamed of seeing some of those places he had only read about. He felt called to ministry and went to Moody Bible Institute where he met his wife. Soon, he was the pastor of his own church with two young daughters (one of them is a founder of the Museum of Make Believe). Anybody who came to his office would immediately see bookshelves filled to the brim with every sort of book imaginable.

We started our journey on April 5th, 2020 when we officially announced the Museum of Make Believe. Now is a perfect time to step back and look at how far down the path we have travelled in the last year. Once the Museum has raised enough funds to create a permanent location, it will be home to creative visionaries and community leaders to help us preserve the timeless art of storytelling within a unique arts environment that is both enchanting and ethereal.

I love making pretty things that can be loved and worn for years to come. The goal at Smith & Stone Co. is to create future heirlooms to be shared for many generations. Everything we make is created through traditional metalsmithing techniques with each design being hand sawn, soldered, sanded and polished with the greatest attention to detail making each piece a unique work of art.

Film directors, Carla Patullo and Elizabeth Beech are determined that Lotte’s story will not be forgotten again. Elizabeth said of Lotte’s films: “They are so beautiful and unique, yet they are oddly familiar. There’s a wonderful combination of playfulness and darkness in her work that drew us in and trapped us. Then we came across an interview with her that was so charming that we decided to make the film about her life.” So, in 2018, that is exactly what they did. Using music, magic, and a stirring narration by Lotte herself, this documentary tells the fairy tale story of an animation pioneer whose passion for her art was tragically thwarted when she was forced to leave Berlin in the early 1930s. This short film qualified for the Oscars, was shortlisted for an IDA Award, and was selected as one of the Hottest Shorts of Hot Docs.

Minds wander and imagination takes over. The active imagination is at full speed only when the physical body is still. In this way, the figure represents the waiting we must endure while reconstruction takes place, but also the anticipation and wonder of what the future holds. Encouraging the viewers to mentally put in place the missing or disjointed pieces and imagine for themselves what the future will be.

There is something particularly appealing about imagining the early 1700’s in which you could find a magic lanternist meandering around a village with one of these early projectors strapped to their backs. If you were lucky enough to see a show, the lantern would be lit with the flickering light of a single candle as you watched the hand-painted slides appear before you, wispy and otherworldly, with the lanternist dramatically telling you the tale.

As a young man, Gerald found his home in the theater and was pursuing acting when a charity reached out to him to see if he would be willing to perform A Christmas Carol as a fundraiser. Thanks to his family history, he was able to get the actual script that Charles Dickens used for his readings and built his performance around that rather than the actual book which would have taken almost four hours to perform. The rest as they say is history.

The Hourglass is a 1/7th scale miniature room created by team artist, Geoff Mitchell, to illustrate a tale of love and sacrifice by an eccentric alchemist who has harnessed perhaps the most precious of all riches, time itself. Each item for this work of art was created by hand to create the feel of an old-world village apothecary, complete with flickering lights and mysterious potion bottles. Before we continue, we want to remind you not to miss the original haunting love story this miniature room is based on. You can find it at the bottom of this diary entry.

What is your daily motto? My Godfather’s motto was always, “Love hard, pray hard, work hard, and then play hard.” I’ve always loved that and try to live by it. He was truly one of my heroes and only recently passed away. I realize now more than ever just how much he lived by that motto. He lived a wonderful life and left an equally wonderful legacy. I can only hope and try to do the same.

Many of us can remember our first experience of sitting under the twinkling night stars, warming our fingers in front of a crackling fire and leaning forward to listen intently as someone begins to tell us a story. Sometimes the stories were sad, sometimes sweet, but often they sent a chill down our spines. Both fairy tales and ghost stories have been such an inspiration to the Museum of Make Believe that we centered many of our events around these types of stories.

What advice can you offer to young artists? My advice to any young artist is to first follow your intuition. We are born with this gift, and as we grow we learn to ignore it. Don’t ignore it. Learn as much as you can but always seek out your own voice in whatever work you make. Do not be put out by critical voices. Try, try again.

The rabbit sat pulling up bits of sweet summer grass. It was a plain rabbit, the same grey-brown of all wild rabbits. Christopher walked over to it, expecting it to dart away, but it didn't. He could tell as it turned to run that he should follow, so he did. The rabbit moved with great purpose down a stone path…

Continue reading the full original fairy tale by Amy Mitchell, written for our book,“Magic Lanterns”, a collection of pictures and tales in this diary post.