When I did my round up of my mad March I said that I’d write in more detail about my experience working in St Albans and about using open resources in telling stories.
A few years ago I worked at a Primary School in Hemel Hempstead. I’ll be honest and say that I could only vaguely remember the school but I did remember the teacher who booked me and fortunately they remembered me when they changed jobs. So it was that I was invited to work with an EYFS/foundation group not far from St Albans but this wouldn’t be a routine booking. I was given the brief that I could only use open resources to tell the stories.
My immediate question was what is an open resource? Well, an open resource is something that could be used for anything. There is a popular drama game in which an object is passed around the circle and the participants explain its function. The only thing it can’t be is what it actually is. There are some objects that this is pretty difficult to do this with but there are others that allow the participant to use their imaginations; an empty plastic bottle can easily be imagined to be a telephone, a magnifying glass or a pneumatic drill, its far trickier to do this with a branded toy like a remote control car (although the remote control would probably be a lot of fun!). Before arriving I was given a list of stories and a photograph of piles of coloured fabric, egg boxes, colanders, pine cones and lollipop sticks.
As a storyteller I am used to using my imagination to turn an object into something else for the benefit of the audience. When I tell folk tales I often use gloves to represent birds and fabric to represent mountains, the sea or even blood. In Roald Dahl’s The Twits and The Enormous Crocodile a walking stick becomes a rifle and oven gloves become crocodiles and coconut trees. When I told Jeremy Strong’s The Hundred Mile an Hour Dog I used a dog lead as a tongue, a steering wheel, a rope and well, a dog lead. Sometimes these ideas come about because I am on a budget, sometimes its because I’m looking for ways to encourage participation and sometimes because I want to encourage repetition – teachers often tell me that their children have demonstrated the ideas they have seen in a story at their playtimes. In every case the simplest idea is often the best.
So it was that I visited a nursery without any props or costumes. I introduced myself and my work before immediately apologising to the children for “forgetting” my work bag. I asked if they could help me tell the stories using the resources provided by the setting. Then working in a side room with a small group at a time the children were given a few moments to explore the resources before we told The Billy Goats Gruff and The Three Little Pigs. I started each story the same way, by using some of the resources to build a map. Just to make my task slightly more risky I invited the children to decide on the use of certain resources – Can you choose something to show a river? Can you make a rickety rackety bridge? – we used pine cones and lollipop sticks and some rudimentary puppetry ideas to create the billy goats and yoghurt pots to create the pigs. Working on the fly was very liberating and it was wonderful to incorporate the children’s ideas about things like the appearance of the troll into the storytelling. The whole experience may have been low budget but it was a huge amount of fun. Here is the feedback from the nursery:
Having seen your work before, I knew that you were a great storyteller, however, it is always a little worrying when you recommend someone to a new school. I need not have worried because you blew both children and staff away with your stories and wonderful energy and enthusiasm. You were able to engage all the children and included them all, even those that were hesitant at first.
You were not at all phased when I asked you to tell the stories in a different way, using open ended resources (junk) and in fact, embraced the new challenge enthusiastically. You delivered a session, specifically tailored to the needs of our children and they responded beautifully. I loved the way that you gave them the freedom to choose their own resources and add their own ideas, this built their confidence and this was reflected in their own storytelling play after the session.
Many parents have also approached me and told me that the children could not stop talking about you at home, so, I am sure, that the children would love to work with you again too.
Over the years I have received feedback suggesting I use more hats, more props and more costumes despite the fact I have packed an entire wardrobe into my session (I used to use a rubber glove tied to an alice band in Jack and the Beanstalk; recently used 35 hats to tell The Enormous Turnip!). Some settings have cupboards full of story bags, dressing up rails and hand puppet sets for their children to tell stories. Whilst this is brilliant and I appreciate that younger audiences require more resources I also wonder if in enhancing a child’s play with accessories we are sometimes overly prescriptive about how to play and may inadvertently be stifling some children’s imaginations and ability to create. As I led these sessions I could see that the children got a lot from the experience of stripping things back and I hope to be able to offer similar sessions in the future.
