A Tale on my Tongue

Training Day comments

marionleeper — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:28:04 +0000

Maddy wrote; ‘just coming together like that was important. I am really impressed with what you are doing.’

Moragh said ‘I really enjoyed the training yesterday. I thought what Graham Langley had to say was fantastic, and talking with likeminded people very encouraging.The whole session only helped to inspire and motivate me more. I hope to project this energy and enthusiasm on the group I want them to have the opportunity to become as passionate as we all feel.’

The first workshop

marionleeper — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:30:45 +0000

The project officially started today, when many of the adults involved from the different groups met together, some for the first time. Fifteen of us in a room in Milton Country Park with Graham Langley our mentor, talking about our hopes and fears for the project. My fear was that my group of teenagers would laugh at me if I asked them to do silly things like pretend to be fairies. ‘Nonsense’ said Graham, ‘You can do anything as long as you do it with conviction.’ To prove his point, he got us all tiptoeing round the room waving imaginary wings. Pete from the traveller team, arriving late into a room of dancing fairies, nearly turned and ran.

Storytellers and educators from many different backgrounds and working in hugely varied settings, it turned out that our aims and ideas overlap in an uncanny way. We want to reclaim storytelling – it’s not just for the very old and the very young, for grandmas and babies and noone in between. It’s every young person’s entitlement. It’s their link to their past and their families. It’s a way of developing a voice, a way of thinking about the world, present and future. We want storytelling to be a showcase for young people’s values and ideas, the culture of their group, their school, their street. We want to show them that it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s relevant. Oh, and we’re going to have loads of biscuits. (Is this in the budget?).

But we got most excited when talking about what we hoped the young storytellers in our projects could offer us. We all feel that the projects will only come to life when young people are involved, with their fun, happiness and energy. We hope they’ll tell us what stories mean to them: we want them to push at the boundaries of what storytelling is. We may get more from them then they do from us. I wonder if any of the young participants will contribute to this blog?

Some favourite stories suggested today

marionleeper — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:05:21 +0000

The Lindworm

The Black Prince

The Piper’s Boots

Erisychthon

Anansi and the Burping Lion

The Donkey Skin

Success!

marionleeper — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:04:32 +0000

Yes – it’s official! We’ve got the grant and can go ahead with the project. First event will be a training day with Graham Langley from the Storytelling Cafe, one of the chief architects of the Young Storyteller of the Year Competition. It will be a chance for all the project partners to meet – we’ve all come to the project in quite different ways, so it should be interesting.

Ready to go!

marionleeper — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:40:43 +0000

September: Three of our project partners have already emailed me to ask for news of the project – so many of us are really excited about the plan. There are going to be some long faces if it doesn’t come off.

Young Voices Storytelling Project

marionleeper — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:23:47 +0000

In July 2008 Cambridge Storytellers submitted a grant proposal to Awards for All for a project to develop storytelling among young people in the Cambridge area. We hope to work with a whole range of young people aged 8-18. Some of our projects will be in primary and secondary schools, one at a college of further education and one with a group of traveller young people. With luck we’ll find some talented young East Anglian storytellers to appear at our Storytelling Festival in Cambridge in May (see our website www.cambridgestorytellers.com) and at the Young Storyteller of the Year competition in March (http://www.ysoy.org.uk/). We’ll be able to tell you on October 13th whether the application was successful.