| Storytelling without books | | Small teams can volunteer in a primary school to tell stories directly to children without a book. This project lights up the imagination of the children and the volunteers.
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Storytelling without books
Project Summary
Barclays North London Senior Management Team spent a day at a local primary school telling stories without books and helping the children to illustrate the stories and to then also retell them to the younger classes in the school.
Project details
A team of 15 London North area directors volunteered a full day at the Primary School. The group underwent a storytelling workshop beforehand to learn about the most creative way of engaging children with their own stories, especially as 90% of the pupils have English as an additional language.
Each volunteer was asked to reinvent a fairytale and on the volunteering day tell this story to a group of eight Year Four children. There was laughter and giggles as the volunteers wowed the children with their funny voices and fluffy props. The pupils eagerly participated as they drew artworks inspired from the fantastic stories they heard – of fantastic stories of kangaroo ballerinas, sneezing dragons and unicorns. Towards the end of the day they also took to stage and retold the stories to a younger, larger group of children from Years 1 & 2.
Following the project, the compilation of stories and artworks were printed out by Barclays into books which can have been shared with other classes in the school. Also, inspired by the senior management team, their PAs are now planning to volunteer at another school to memorialise the children’s stories and art works by creating a mural along the school’s main staircase walls.
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Project objectives
For the Barclays team:
The Barclays North London senior management team were looking for a tangible one day volunteering opportunity, completely different to their day job, and can provide an insight into the key issues faced by one of the boroughs they work within.
For the school:
The Primary School was interested in gaining corporate partnership as they never had it before. The school was particularly interested in doing a storytelling project as part of the curriculum to encourage the imagination of the pupils and to promote reading, innovative communication and creativity. |
Inputs
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Outcomes
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- 15 volunteers for 1 day
- 2 hours storytelling workshops for volunteers
- 20 hours school coordination
- 10 hours volunteer team leader coordination
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- 4 reinvented stories told over
- 50 school children compiled artwork about the stories into books
- 1 new corporate community partnership
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“It was difficult to prioritise the project with other pressing deadlines, but I’m so glad I took part. It was humbling to hear about the difficulties that these children go through.”
A Barclays senior manager
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Get involved
Get in touch with us; we can help you organise a similar project in a local Westminster school
Storytelling... without books
A picture drawn by a child to illustrate one of the stories
A volunteer discussing the childrens' illustrations
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Volunteer Centre Westminster: 53-55 Praed Street London W2 1NR | Switchboard: 020 7402 8076
Registered Charity No. 295501 | Registered Company No. 2052268 |
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