Fri 30 May | 10.30am (6hrs) | £36 (£30 Network Members)

This workshop will be delivered by teacher Beverley Bryant and student Elinor Thomson, allowing participants a unique perspective on storytelling for young people in Scotland today. Both facilitators are enthusiastic advocates of the power of storytelling to enhance, and even in some cases transform, the lives of young people.

Firstly, hear about the increasing opportunities for young storytellers, within the school curriculum and beyond in the wider community. Beverley and Elinor will then go on to offer practical suggestions for helping young people to gain the skills needed to find, recall and tell stories. There will be opportunities for participants to step into in the shoes of young storytellers, if only briefly, reminding everyone of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Later in the day, the group will begin planning experiences for young storytellers to develop their craft and consider creating/ finding further opportunities for young people to share their stories.

Each year, Beverley uses storytelling to help P7s make the transition to high school. In addition, she regularly delivers skills development workshops for visiting European teachers.

For this workshop, Beverley will be joined by Elinor Thomson, aged 17 and winner of the James Award for Best Newcomer at the Young Storyteller of the Year Awards 2014. She will be offering a young person’s perspective on encouraging and supporting young storytellers.

Sat 31 May | 2pm (3hrs) | £18 (£15 Network Members)

Discover how to help and encourage preschool engagement with books with the Storypockets method in an engaging afternoon session on Saturday 31 May.

Storypockets is a programme for preschool-aged children conceived by Beth Cross, a storyteller, educator and researcher based at the University of the West of Scotland. The system provides a frame for children to take moments from stories or rhymes and play creatively with them. A simple design combines puppet theatre and a scrapbook that families decorate and build on over their visits to Rhymetimes and at home.

“One of the things that surprised us about Storypockets is that it meant children under three actively became involved in the conversation and told us what they remembered, and what they treasured about the books, rhymes and stories depicted in their Storypockets.”

Read Beth’s blog post on Storypockets on the Scottish Book Trust website.
Inspired by work with Craigmillar Books for Babies, the tool supports a co-production approach to family literacy. Creator Beth Cross shares the approach and shows how it can be used as a basis for regular engagement through sessions and informal interaction.

Begin the language journey with joy and playful stimulus.

Beth Cross is a Senior Lecturer in Community Learning and Participation at the University of West of Scotland and has been researching the interface between formal and informal learning contexts for the last fifteen years, with particular interest in dialogic methods of exploring learner identities, strategies and trajectories.  She has taught in the areas of social policy and children’s services in England and Scotland and worked with a number of creative interdisciplinary projects that involve visual and dramatic arts in order to expand the modalities for deliberation and participation.