Storytelling Starters ~ Engaging
Saturday, March 15th, 2014
It’s arrived. Storytelling for a Greener World is an important new book about how to engage people in our natural environment through stories and storytelling. The official launch date is April 11th and the foreword is by Jonathon Porritt of Friends of the Earth. The inspiration came from Alida Gersie and a wide range of storytellers provide the contents. The essay I feel privileged to have contributed is on the effects on teachers and children of working with a Pembrokeshire legend about the Preseli hills.
Storytelling for a Greener World is meticulously designed to provide a really helpful, inspiring resource. For details for buying it, see below.
My key word:
The key word for me is engagement. I increasingly realise it’s why I do what I do. Again on Wednesday, I felt its impact when spending the day at St Stephen’s Primary School in Shepherds Bush. The children remembered. They remembered me, they remembered my stories. I’d been there last year in their Arts Week. I’d gone there again a few weeks ago on their special day for celebrating stories. Now on Wednesday, their wish to let me know that they remembered came out strongly in all the groups, none of them more than the youngest. The little red monkey, Matty Treweller, Nokomis of the great rain … characters and themes from stories they’d previously heard from me were called out with great joy as each session began. It felt like the children were keen for me to realise that we’d already established a common bond through participating together in the world of story.
Where there’s been one story, there’s always another. (more…)