On Thursday four wonderful stories were told by participants on my Kensington Palace storytelling course for parents. I’ve mentioned some of the stories before. For me, the making of them was one marvellous element of the course. Other elements included my imparting some of the techniques of storytelling with Early Years children, such storytelling essentials as visualization and, of course, aspects of the history and life of Kensington Palace including the 18th century mural by William  Kent and other objects and paintings in the palace which in turn gave rise to our storymaking.

 All the stories we heard on Thursday were made up by the parents working in groups, all revolved around an object real or imagined and what follows is one of the four. It’s a Cinderella-type story and I hope I can do it justice. Its makers said they were willing for me to retell it but the retelling is in my own words.

The necklace of pearls

Once there was a king and a queen who had a son. When the son grew up, his royal parents decided it would be good if he got married. So they announced a great ball to be held at the palace. At the ball, they were thinking, he might meet a suitable bride.

After the ball was announced, there was a great deal of preparing. Extra people were brought to the palace to help – cooks, cleaners, hat-makers, musicians.

One person who was sent to help at the palace was a quiet, shy and good-hearted young girl. The job she was given was to assist with the cleaning. On the morning of the ball, she was sent to clean a particular room in which was a beautiful painting. The painting was of a lovely-looking woman with a little girl beside her who looked as if she was her daughter. Both the woman and the girl in the painting were wearing necklaces made of pearls.

But the painting was very dusty. The cleaning maid took out her duster and carefully started to dust it down. She began at the top – dusting, dusting, dusting – and it was when she came to the face that she experienced a very big surprise. As she dusted the face of the woman, the woman in the painting began to smile. Then as the cleaning maid continued, the woman’s necklace began to glow and slowly, gradually, it came out of the painting and clasped itself round the cleaning girl’s neck.

Just then, a strange creaking noise came from the wardrobe that was the only other thing in the room and when the maid turned round, she saw that the wardrobe’s doors had opened and inside was a most beautiful ball-gown. Then she heard a woman’s voice speaking. It was the woman in the painting. ‘You must put on this dress,’ the woman said, ‘and wear it with the necklace to the ball tonight.’ (more…)

Contrast and connection are this week’s themes. On Wednesday when my husband Paul returned from his trip to Australia to go to his godson’s wedding, the huge contrast in temperature – 29 degrees down to 2 – was just one aspect of what we talked about. Looking at his photos – sunny beaches, a kangaroo with baby in pouch, the vegetation – I felt highly aware of the massive contrasts he’d experienced in culture, landscape and general style of life.

One detail that particularly struck me was his description of the feel on his hand of the delicate claws of a kangaroo mother.

The power of touch

Then, Wednesday evening, I had my own extraordinary experience of touch. In a workshop at the Interfaith Centre in Queens Park, the participants were asked to spend ten minutes talking in pairs (five minutes each) about how we are involved in narrative work. A crucial factor about the results for us all was that, as requested, we’d each spoken to each other with eyes closed, hands touching. It made us all highly aware of the essence of the other.

Connection! That Wednesday evening experience was part of the second Forum event arranged by St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. Since conflict resolution is the very specialised field of work of a number of those who were present, I sometimes felt conscious of the comparative ordinariness of my 30-years of work as a professional storyteller working in schools and with groups of adults. Yet the very next day, back at Kensington Palace for Session 4 of my parents course in how to tell stories, I felt once again conscious of the extraordinariness of it – how, because of the people, it is full of meaning and value. And also, always, a sense of potential.

Points of connection

Here are some of the things I experienced on Thursday.

1. During a synchronised retelling of one of the stories I’ve taught to the group (Mrs Wiggle and Mrs Waggle), I became extremely aware of the big, beautiful eyes of a tiny toddler who had been brought along by his mother. My voice, my face, the story, the atmosphere? Whatever it was that engaged him so much, the little toddler was gripped. He sat looking up at me with such attention, it felt entirely obvious that he knew what was going on, and that in some way it was entirely for him. Connection!

2. With another bigger boy – a four-year old also there with his mother – I saw at once from the way he joined in, though often looking at her not at me, that the story was already familiar to him. So I knew his mother must have told it to him. I was delighted. It’s one of the aims of the course – to get parents telling stories to their own and other children. Connection!

3. During a break in the session, one of the Arabic-speaking mothers showed me a lovely jewellery box she’d brought in from home. She also showed me part of the story her 8-year old daughter had created and written about it. I got the sense that this story was something very new for the girl: her teacher in school had evidently been very impressed by what she’d done. For my part, I was impressed by the mother. Last week, we’d used the magic of objects as an inspiration for making new stories. She’d clearly passed on the magic and in so doing had engendered another example of the potency for change that can arise through story. Connection! (more…)

You know a story is working its magic when a listener says they were really inside it. That’s what child after child reported this Wednesday in one of the classes where I was telling stories at St Stephen’s Primary School in Shepherds Bush. I’d asked them what they’d felt during a story I’d told them. ‘As if I was in it.’ ‘Like I was there.’ ‘I felt like it was happening to me.’

The same kinds of thing were said on Thursday at Session 3 of the Parents’ Storytelling Course at Kensington Palace. The parents on the course are a terrific group of people, all of them mums except for one dad. One said this week, ‘This storytelling course is really changing my life.’ It was the greater depth of their response to the world around them that several had noticed – like they were going more deeply into the things around them. One had done lots of Internet research on historical personages linked with the palace. Another is now bringing some of our storytelling techniques into the nightly storytelling she does with her children.

‘It makes them really involved,’ she said. ‘My son is aged nine. Now he is paying more attention.’

Making things happen (more…)

Recycling has to happen quite often when you’re a storyteller. Stories have to be re-made, themes and ideas adapted to the present need. This is partly because motifs in stories are, by nature, constantly recycling themselves, reappearing in some other similar form, maybe in a new story you’re making. Partly, too, it’s because you’d never have enough time or energy or imagination to make everything completely new every time.

So in Session 2 of my parents’ storytelling course at Kensington Palace this week, some recycling had to go on.

Item 1: name game

First there was another name game. We’d had one last week but this week a few new parents had joined. It was important to re-establish the friendly, inclusive atmosphere we’d created in Session 1. This week’s name game was one I’ve used many dozens of times before. (more…)

Today’s the last of my storytelling games – at any rate for now. Next week, I’ll be on holiday. Check my blog to see where I’ll be! This week, I’m writing about a game I’m calling Let’s Move though I don’t think I’ve ever given it a title before.

Who’s Let’s Move for:

I’ve never played this game with children. It could be worth trying, especially perhaps on occasions such as school camping trips. Usually I’ve played it with groups of adults and generally when I’ve got to know the group quite well.

What happens:

As the storyteller and facilitator, you start off by introducing the idea that we might all fantasise about moving somewhere together and seeing what kind of world we will build together. Shall we go somewhere nice and warm? Somewhere far away? The possibilities are endless. The stars? An unpopulated island? The past?

As you start to receive suggestions of where you might all go, you can also start to throw out the idea that people can decide where they’ll live in this place and who exactly they are. Some in the group might start identifying particular jobs that they do, some might be related to others. They might discover that there are common projects in their new community or warring factions or scandals.

You can also help give shape to the game by saying you’ll be playing it for about half an hour and that, as facilitator, you’ll help to keep order.

A personal experience of playing the game:

My single most memorable time with Let’s Move took place early on in my career. I’d been invited to run weekly storytelling training sessions with groups of previously unemployed people who were now getting jobs on After-School Care Schemes in Lambeth.

There were many groups, many sessions. The people who attended varied in age, gender and ethnicity. Many were Jamaicans. I remember one man articulating a memorable question when I got his particular group involved in telling and retelling stories: ‘Can we use our own voice?’ I knew what he meant. I am white, a woman and middle-class with an educated middle-class voice. He was black, male and working-class and he spoke with a Jamaican voice. How could I be any kind of role-model for him? But his question has stuck with me always. I’ve often referred to it in other sessions since. What else have we got but our own voice? How can we tell stories in any way but our own way? Part of the point of storytelling training to me is to get people to see this and be empowered by it. (more…)

Making up stories is something many people are nervous of doing. Yet, as I hope my blogs over the last few weeks have demonstrated, there are lots of painless ways to practise. And anyway, what does it matter if your story isn’t the best that’s ever been created? The fun lies in the doing. And the doing teaches you an awful lot about the way stories work. 

Story Cards

This week I’m writing about story cards as a beguiling way to play with stories. (more…)

Ideas can sprout like potatoes – which is why, this week, my photos include a potato that sprouted in my vegetable rack, plus a red cabbage I neglected too long which has by now put forth such beautiful tentacles that I thought it deserved some photos too.

A storytelling game which definitely encourages ideas to sprout is the one called ‘In the City of Rome …’ Goodness knows if that’s the game’s real name. But that’s the way I’ve remembered it and that’s the way I’ve played it.

Who’s it for?

It’s suitable for fairly small groups, maybe up to about eight people.

How does it work?

In the version of the game that I remember, there is a fountain at the beginning. So the first person starts off with ‘In the City of Rome, there was a fountain …’ and then offers it to the second person to add something on. That person once again begins from the beginning and again adds something new. And so on and on until the story is brought to a conclusion. As with the other games I’ve been describing here in previous weeks, the group may need to be reminded – or to remind itself! – that stories have a need of endings. An ending may need to be prompted.

Why does it work?

I think the success of this game comes from the repetition that is required as each participant takes up what has previously been said before adding his or her own contribution. The repetition makes it different from the much more common version of the ‘Add Something …’ game where people do not start from the beginning each time but simply add to what’s gone before. ‘In the City of Rome …’ is, in my view, easier and more fun to play. Repetition gives time for gestation. It also nurtures confidence, inspiring new ideas to burst forth. (more…)

Strange faces appear in all kinds of odd places when you start looking for them. On the right is one I spotted when walking in my local part this week. It’s been there a while. It must have been last week’s Transformation game which made me finally see it.

Now for this week’s game.

Fortunately/Unfortunately is a popular game. It too must have been subconsciously affecting my thinking this week. For on Wednesday morning, shortly after one of my top rear teeth dropped out of my mouth without warning, I found myself reporting the incident in an email to friends in exactly the mode of the game:

Unfortunately, one of my back teeth fell out this morning.

Fortunately, I was quickly able to fix a dental appointment for later this afternoon.

Unfortunately, I also felt apprehensive that it would cost a lot of money to sort out the problem.

Fortunately, my dentist said no, it was just the crown that had fallen out and he could cement it back.

Unfortunately, he also said it might not last and if it fell out again, I’d have to get a whole new crown.

The general idea:

As in my true-life example above, any story that is to be created according to the pattern of this game is one that will swing back and fore between fortunate and unfortunate events or perceptions. Good and bad. Lucky and unlucky. It’s a game where the optimist and the pessimist can battle it out. (more…)

Is it just me? When I’m going on walks, I’m always childishly delighted when I spot a face or an animal shape in a rock or a tree. It’s like playing The Transformation Game, only in the landscape.

The Transformation Game

This storytelling game arose from my fondness for objects – plus the fact that, on a visit to Bruges, I’d acquired a double-lidded basket in a Sunday market. It became enormous fun to ply this basket with unusual objects, then play The Transformation Game with different suitable groups.

The Basic Plan:

As the facilitator, you first point out that you’ve got a double-lidded basket and that, inside, there are some interesting items.

Then you ask for a volunteer to come forward and choose which lid of the basket to open. Of course, both lids open onto the same inside but it’s a bit of fun to pretend that the choice is real.

Now you ask your volunteer to feel around in the basket and, not looking at what’s inside, to pull out an object of his or her choice. And of course, if it’s children you’re working with, they’re going to enjoy tittering about the possible things they might feel – a living snake or a real eye. (more…)

Got any storytelling games of your own to share? Please write in with your favourite. It would be great to hear about it. To me, storytelling games are invaluable – a vital part of the whole activity of storytelling and a fabulous way to get everyone relaxed. In my thirty years of storytelling, such examples as last week’s Desert Island became one of the strongest building blocks of my Storyworks approach. Here’s some reasons why:

• Storytelling games can be just the thing in a very wide variety of circumstances – with children in schools or community groups (parents learning about storytelling, adult with learning disabilities, elderly people in day centres, people getting together for a good time).
• They can be created (or recreated) to suit the themes of the stories to follow.
• They can allow everyone to participate at their own level.
• They give opportunity for individuals to express their own personalities, sharing their wit, humour and creativity in a totally unthreatening way.

In my Storyworks approach, (and I’m not talking here about the occasions when, as the storyteller, you’re being a performer in front of a sizeable audience), the storyteller is definitely NOT the be-all and the end-all and in NO WAY to be regarded as the only and most creative person in the room. The storyteller is the FACILITATOR, enabling the story or stories to become the centrepiece of the occasion and everyone present to share in the experience to the extent that they can and wish to do so.

Last week when I wrote about Desert Island, I said I’d talk this week about some of the variants it has spawned. (more…)