Empowering young change makers through collective story making!
We have developed an innovative pedagogical approach to immersive story, blending digital technology, narrative inquiry and creative arts. These resources challenge children and young people, to navigate story worlds collectively, as they share their creative ideas and make decisions through imaginative problem-solving. The story resources have been used by teachers nationally to develop interdisciplinary links to curriculum and as opportunities for professional development. We call these 'story weaves'.
What do teachers say?
“What a fantastic resource it is, I really wish we could use it more. We had some fantastic lessons with it and I'm sad to see it end, it was brilliant”
What do parents say?
“My child never tells us what she's been doing at school. Even when we ask her about it, she won't tell us anything. This weekend we drove to Liverpool and for half an hour she told us a story she'd made up about some children visiting another planet and exploring a cave.”
What do young people say?
Reimagining Home
(ages 7-12)
Reimagining Home is a unique, live, online, immersive, interactive story for KS2 children in which they get to develop literacy and social/emotional skills as they act as creative changemakers in an uncertain world. This was a collaborative project by Story Makers Company, Leeds Beckett University, created with several brilliant story weavers and initially designed to respond to a time of global crisis by celebrating the joy and wellbeing associated with ‘making’ creatively together. Reimagining Home addresses themes of climate change, separation and wellbeing with learning being both autonomous and collaborative. You will be able to cover a broad range of cross curricula outcomes including English, Science, History, Expressive Arts, & Geography.
Museum of Legends
(ages 7-12)
What if there was a place for you to share stories of your heroes and justice seekers?
A place for change agents to celebrate their legacy and the legacy of their community. A museum of legends. A group of young people from Chapeltown worked hard to answer this question and curate their own museum. Ujima partnered with Story Makers Company and CRED at Leeds Beckett University to create this exciting new opportunity. Ujima is a social action project based in Chapeltown, Leeds that works to improve educational outcomes for Black children. To find out more about Ujima, please go to www.projectujima.co.uk.
Elianna interview about Museum of Legends
Common Ground
(ages 16-18)
Thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s Common Ground project, local young people were offered the opportunity to creatively interpret Ipswich Museum’s collections.
The task was to creatively use Ipswich Museum’s collections to make an online space which tells stories meaningful to young people. In partnership with Ipswich Museum, Story Makers Company delivered the project and Volunteering Matters provided participants from their Peer Action Collective. The project combined visual storytelling with live art making, in a process Story Makers call a ‘story weave’. During online workshops, the young people co-created ideas and concepts for their online space. Artist Hannah Aria also led in-person creative media workshops at the Museum, where young people explored collections in relation to youth violence, crime and oppression/voicelessness.
Story Exchange
Project
(ages 7-12)
Working with teachers, artists and researchers across two years, our project, Empowering Pupil Voice through Drama Worldbuilding, focused on using story to bring the curriculum to life with a focus on children’s diverse literacies, communication, cultural and emotional literacy. Working across 8 schools in Bradford, the story approach uses imaginative curriculum entry point for children in Year 3 and 4 of Primary schools 2 years, placing creativity, democratic learning and wellbeing centrally. This interactive and immersive story experience was used as a narrative thread to link their experiences and collect their stories.
