Tell-a-Story Day Case Studies

Imagine Storybags at North Edinburgh Arts Centre: a family partnership with National Museums Scotland

For this year’s Tell a Story Day, National Museums Scotland will launch new storybags created in partnership with North Edinburgh Arts Centre supported by the Robertson Trust. Families from the CREATE family art programme sourced books and objects, generated ideas and piloted activities following an inspiring visit to the Imagine gallery at the redeveloped National Museum of Scotland. The storybags are on offer at the storyplace section of the Imagine gallery, a space for creativity and learning designed specifically for pre-school and under 8’s and inspired by objects from the Museum’s collections. This gallery shares with the CREATE programme a focus on encouraging imaginative and open-ended play.

Through the storybags, the families at North Edinburgh Arts Centre aim to encourage parents and children to bring stories to life through puppets, reading tips, games and other resources, giving parents the confidence and skills to expand out from the story into new areas of learning. Storybags help stimulate conversations between parents and children, develop new language and skills and create an environment where families come together to share a cosy, bonding experience.

It has been great for me to meet and help to shape these resources with the families, who had some fantastic ideas about how to link books, objects and creative approaches together to bring the stories to life. We hope this project will encourage other families and users of North Edinburgh Arts Centre to visit the National Museum of Scotland, try out the storybags in the fantastic, free Imagine gallery and perhaps go home and create their own!

The bags will be launched by storyteller Mara Menzies on Tell a Story Day, 28 October 2011, at North Edinburgh Arts Centre who will be telling further tales of the sea and from around the globe. They are available for use by families and visitors to North Edinburgh Art Centre on request; please contact the Centre on 0131 315 2151 for further details, or phone me directly on 0131 247 4435 for more information about the project.

Jane Miller
Community Engagement Officer
J.Miller@nms.ac.uk

TASD 2010 Case Study: The Bear of Winter

In July 2010 our storytelling group had the idea to run an event to celebrate Tell a Story Day. The Borders Guid Crack Club had been running a successful monthly session with a good core group of tellers called Borders Bards. There were quite a few members interested in Celtic tales, history and Druidry and it was observed that TASD was near the Celtic festival of Samhain or Hallowe'en. So we chose to run an extra session/evening based around the ancient Celtic calendar and relate the stories to a Druidic animal appropriate to that part of the year and call it The Bear of Winter. As the idea of bears evokes that of the cave, we re-created an intimate space in the living room of one on our members with candles, cosy seats and cushions.

The event was put together very simply, with all of the invites passed on mainly through word of mouth and some emailing. The evening was organised in the style of the kitchen-ceilidhs of old, with a few stories from the Borders Bards and much room for contributions from the audience. All of the tales/poems shared were themed around bears and we had a wide range of contributions, from comic stories to magical tales of real bears and bear spirits, Roald Dahl’s wacky Red Riding Hood, King Arthur, celebrated local poet Howard reading his Bear A’Boon Traquair and even Paddington Bear. Afterwards we shared a potluck feast, enjoying the warm glow of the stories and the friendship.

By the end of the evening the organisers and the audience were all one family and everyone enjoyed it so much that we ran over by a considerable time.

Daru McAleece
Storyteller and Artist
david@mcaleece.com

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