the storytellers festival
My third year community project aimed to encourage young people to tell stories using various mediums-- writing, drawing, and acting.
original event
This event took place at a local primary school for students in year 3. With the help of two student volunteers from my university who study the other two mediums, the young people experienced three different workshops. These were specially designed to teach particular skills necessary in telling stories through writing, images, and body.
The students each got to walk away with various items and pieces that they generated through these workshops, and could continue to develop in their own time.
my workshop
my workshop featured storytelling through the 'building blocks'. I supported these building blocks through relevant picture books (photographed-- left), and different exercises to encourage the students to engage and understand the content. In the end of their workshop session, the aim was for them to have completed a picture book or equivalent first draft of a story.
the future of this workshop
After this primary workshop, I reflected on the few things I would change to better achieve my original aims. One of the flaws was lack of depth of these stories, many of the points I made through the presentation being ignored or forgotten. As a way to improve this, I've rearranged the entire presentation and created a worksheet along side it that would prompt the young people to explore things such as character and setting in more depth. This will result in a much longer and richer story.
Beyond this, I have also developed a secondary workshop which encourages the children to take the work they created in the first workshop, and bring it back for some mindful editing. This aims to follow with the government teaching requirements, and allow students the opportunity to feel what being a writer is like.
