The Village Storytelling Centre
The inclusive policy of the Village Storytelling Centre in Glasgow embraces work with children, pensioners and, more recently, refugees and asylum seekers.
According to Rachel Smillie, project manager of The Village Storytelling Centre, storytelling is probably the most inclusive art form there is; requiring no props or equipment, and only an audience of one. Everybody, she points out, has a story to tell.
Rachel should know. She began telling stories professionally 15 years ago (once her four children had started school) and for the past five years has been project manager of the Village Storytelling Centre in Glasgow. She’s been in charge since its inception, when the congregation at the St. James Parish Church in Pollok, on the south side of the city, decided that they wanted the local community (which includes several large council housing schemes) to get the use of their rambling Church of Scotland building during the week.
They received funding from the Greater Pollok Social Inclusion Partnership for a storytelling centre which would reflect the local village, the global village and the 'faiths' village. In other words, says Rachel: 'it would concentrate on stories from and about the local community; on stories from around the world and on stories from different faiths.'
The funding included money to turn the split level side gallery into a comfortable, welcoming space. With a mock-up traditional kitchen range, an old-fashioned grocery store front, several storytelling corners and an activity area, it was transformed into a place where the imagination begins to open up and inhibitions are cast off.
In just five years, the Village Storytelling Centre has established itself as a vital part of the community, its work already attracting attention and applause both here and abroad. It has become the focus for a wide range of storytelling activities involving as many as 5000 (five thousand) people per annum, everyone from the very young to the very old and, more recently, the refugees and asylum seekers who have come to live in the Greater Pollok area.
'We have three core activities' Rachel Smillie explains. 'The primary school programme which includes some nurseries; the reminiscence sessions and our monthly ceilidhs. There are 17 primary schools in the Greater Pollok area and 12 of them send all their classes to the Centre once a year for a story, followed by a craft or drama activity based on the story.
'We have six different reminiscence groups who meet here once month and include people from nursing homes and sheltered housing. And then there are the song and story ceilidhs which take place once a month where we light candles and serve hot peas and vinegar during the break. We get between 40 and 50 people along for each session.'
This year, The Village Storytelling Centre has also employed Julie Dawid, another professional storyteller who has been carrying out a 'community of enquiry' project in Pollok primary schools. She’s been working with 10 groups of P6 pupils, seeing each group every week since October. Based on philosophical enquiry, Julie tells the children a story, and then writes down questions from the floor that have been sparked off by the story. The 'twist' is that Julie doesn’t tackle the questions, herself. Instead, the child who poses it is asked what they think the answer is, with other pupils allowed to add their thoughts in turn.
'Of course, there is no right or wrong answer' Rachel points out 'so everybody’s opinion is valid. One of the main aims of the project is to let kids see that they don’t have to come to blows over something just because they have different views. And because there is no reading or writing involved, it means that children of all abilities can join in equally.'
It's another example, she says, of what a brilliant art form 'story' is. (You notice that when Rachel starts getting really passionate about her subject, she refers to it as 'story', rather that storytelling, in the same way that other arts professionals talk about 'dance' or 'music' or 'film.')
More recently, The Village Storytelling Centre has been developing projects to help refugees and asylum seekers in the Pollok area feel more valued and included. Last year, they employed writer and storyteller, Liam Stewart to record, transcribe and edit a collection of simple traditional stories, memories and anecdotes he gathered from a group of 30 people from all over the world who had made new homes in the community.
The result was 'Buffalo Horns', a delightful paperback book illustrated by pupils from St. Paul's High School in Pollok and including a thumbnail biography of each contributor, which has been sent out to every school in Glasgow. Now in its second printing, 'Buffalo Horns' is still available from The Village Storytelling Centre, priced £5.00, and would be a useful learning and teaching tool in any classroom.
This year, Liam Stewart is working on a second project with locally-based asylum seekers and refugees, aimed at getting them to write down their stories themselves. A core group of 12, plus a few long time residents, have been meeting at the Centre one evening a week for two hours. They pick a topic ('shoes' turned out to be a particularly popular one) to get the group going and then settle down to write stories about it, with Liam helping out with structure and grammar when necessary.
Members of the group are collected by mini bus from a central location, brought to the centre, then dropped off after the session ends. There is also a crèche which means parents don't have to worry about child care arrangements. One couple who attend together use it for their older son but keep their young baby with them when they're talking and writing.
As far as Rachel Smillie is concerned, there is almost nothing that 'story' cannot achieve. She caught the story 'bug', herself, some 25 years ago when, after finishing a degree in archaeology at Edinburgh University, she worked with Voluntary Service Overseas in Nigeria and was exposed to that country's vibrant oral tradition.
'I read a lot of stories to my children when they were little' she says 'but I noticed that a kind of 'magic' occurred when I told a story without using a book.'
It seems unlikely that Rachel Smillie will ever run out of ideas for story-based projects and she hopes, ultimately, that The Village Storytelling Centre will be able to play a much greater learning and teaching role in Glasgow.