Each workshop, is approximately two hours long, and has two basic elements. There will be a brief introduction, which will be designed to illustrate different ways in which one might think about telling stories (be it different ways to remember or different ways that one might perform the same piece). This introduction will be peppered with different performances designed to illustrate each point in turn, and will offer at each point the possibility for a more general discussion.

In the second half of each workshop, the participants will be divided into groups. Each group will be encouraged to take up one or other of the principles in the introduction, and use it to create a five minute storytelling of their own, which they will aim to perform to their fellow participants at the end.

Current workshops include.

Working with Memory

This workshop identifies various different strategies for remembering very long and often highly complex stories, and examines exactly how that affects the kind of stories which one might then tell. (key stage 2-4 speaking)

Who Am I Again?

How does a story change if you tell it from another person’s point of view. In this workshop participants are told a straight story, and then challenged first to work why  everyone behaves in it as they do, and secondly to retell the story from from the position of a character within the tale. The aim is to create as many stories as as there are different characters, and then to think about which we most trust (and why)

Adding up History

Did you know that maths has a history as rich as any story of kings or schemes of empire? Mathematicians and maths need not be dull! This workshop tells some of the tales from the great mathematical characters of the past, what they found out, when and what happened to them (and why).

Pythagoras theorem, trigonmetery and even simultaneous equation will never be (quite) the same again!

Echoes of past tales

A ‘real story’ such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or Egil’s Saga, contains many separate stories, and many different traditions, and the aim of this workshop is to open out a few more! Participants will be divided into groups, and each group given a part of the story to work on, and make their own, by adding whatever details they choose. The aim will be at the end to thread all these separate traditions back together, and try to make them a single tale again!

Two variations of this workshop for older participants are also available. The first takes a legend such as that of King Arthur and traces the way it was transformed from the barest of hints, to the richest of legends is examined, through a number of different performances, each linked to a specific historical text. In the second variation the concentration is upon tales of battles gone by. (English keystage 2 group discussion, and compositions)

Joking About

Jokes often were, and are a very serious matter, allowing criticisms that might otherwise be un-sayable, their voice. Different ways in which a joke might be used to say ‘other things’ will be explored, across a range of stories and cultures. Participants will then be encouraged to tell jokes of their own, and make them matter (Citizenship key stage 2-3  respecting other people)

Finding Our Own Voice

One of the strangest features about stories is the sheer number of different ways that the same story can be told or retold, to bring out very different facets and aspects of the same basic tale. This workshop will introduce both some of the different ways in which one might change a story, and examines the various reasons why one might do so.

A variation of this workshop, for older participants looks at ways that one might almost deliberately ‘misremember the story’, and the creative potential that follows on from this apparent mistake.

Keystages 2-4 compoistion and drama)

Porlock the Warlock the workshop: Click here for details

Storytelling Workshops for Schools

To learn more about the storytellers, go to; Widsith and Deor