What’s the Story? The Inclusive Storytelling Programme for TY Students
In the late 1930s, Irish schoolchildren across the country were asked to do something very unusual. They were asked to describe their worlds. As a result, we have over seven hundred thousand pages of neat handwriting in copybooks from 1937-39 describing games, clothing, homemade toys, local customs and a lot more. We call this the Bailiúchán na Scol, or the “Schools’ Collection.” It was an absolute triumph.
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In late August 2023, I had a conversation with Kate Kerrigan over the phone.
“It’s a bloody brilliant idea,” she said. “And nobody is doing it. Somebody should do it. We should do it.”
The idea was simple. We were going to teach storytelling to TY students in a school in the middle of Ballina. I could picture it so clearly: rows of industrious teenagers with ink-stained hands, cunningly crafted writing exercises and feedback given in green pen, story structure and the hero’s journey and Chekhov and the whole bit. I knew writing. I was good at writing. This wouldn’t be a problem.
“No! Not writing!” said Kate. “Forget writing. We’re going to teach them how to tell stories.”
Not everyone wants to or is able to write. But everyone has a story in them, and everyone could tell it, if they were only given the tools. This was our theory and that was the deal – the students would tell us what was important to them and be given a space to express themselves, to describe their lives honestly and openly, and in return we would give them a book. A real, physical book with pages and a spine which they could put on a bookshelf somewhere and look at it and think: that’s my book.
Writing ability was to be left at the door. They could draw, paint, scribble, sing. We encouraged voice memos and videos. If students wanted, they could just tell us. It was vitally important that form did not become a barrier to participation, because why should it be? There were students in the class for whom English was not their first language – but find me a language in which stories are not told. Inclusivity was crucial. Form wasn’t important – they just had to get their story out.
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I’m a teacher. I arrived at Moyne College with the intention of teaching. It quickly became clear that I didn’t need to teach the students so much as get out of their way. In giving account of their lives they were generous, honest, funny. I was struck again and again by the maturity with which they took stock of themselves and the world around them. I carried out one-to-one workshops: they answered my questions candidly, meeting my suggestions with suggestions of their own and pushing back against anything they viewed as daft (primarily my writerly notions). Sometimes, I just nodded in agreement and took notes.
Among their stories is poetry and prose. There is a vulnerable account of what it is like to have grown up with plenty of money but little sense of purpose. There is a literary reflection on coping with dyspraxia when coping with being a teenager is already hard enough. There is a beautiful ode to a younger brother who may have Down Syndrome but is in no sense lesser for it. There is a truly eloquent description of how much one storyteller hates school – but once you’ve read it, you might find his case rather convincing.
At the midway point of the programme we held a mixer in Ballina Library, where the stories-in-progress debuted before a delighted audience. Many of the students didn’t want to perform their work, so we invited local writers and creatives to come along and read it for them. It was special – the stories truly came alive in the reading of them.
I compiled the stories and now they are a book. It looks professional, it feels professional, it smells professional. This is important, since books are something we interact with physically. We hold them and dog-ear them and mark them up. The fact that Story? Ballina 2023-2024 is of a high quality adds value to the work contained within.
That’s what it was all about, really. We assign value to narrative, to stories with a capital S. It’s easy to think that some people have stories while the rest of us just get on with our lives. But our lives are inherently narrative, our experiences inherently imbued with meaning. It’s just a matter of recognising it.
The Schools’ Collection asked children to articulate a rapidly fading world as they saw it, and this gave value and legitimacy to their perspective, to their understanding of things. We gave our students the same task, in a sense. We asked them to recognise the narratives in their lives and tell us all about them. We asked them to describe to us what was important to them, and then we listened. We felt that given the opportunity, the young people of Ireland today would have just as much to say as the young people of Ireland a century ago.
We were right. It was a rare pleasure to meet them and collaborate with them, to hear their tales and collect them. These are a serious people, a generation to be reckoned with. We discovered this by asking a simple question and then bothering to listen to the answer.
What’s the story?
© Luke Power
Story? Ballina 2023-2024 launches Thursday 16th of January at 6pm in Ballina Library. Guest speakers will include Bob Johnston, Faith Hogan, Lizann Gorman and Carmel Mc Mahon. The book will be available for purchase from Moyne College Ballina and select retailers.
If you or your school are interested in the programme, please reach out to storytycoordinator@gmail.com.
