In 2024, I was employed by the North-East Culture Collective to work with the Grampian Regional Equalities Council (GREC) to run storytelling activities as part of GREC’s weekly language café. The trial was a huge success, and I was invited to continue the partnership with GREC when the project finished.
Along with GREC, I developed a toolkit for other creative practitioners working in language cafes. I found that a three-part structure worked best with people with a range of language levels and backgrounds:
- An activity that gets people using what language they have.
One of my favourite activities was cutting up an interesting photograph (taken from a free stock photo site like Pexels.com), asking the participants to put it together, and then discussing what might be happening. This allowed people who had no or little English to contribute. - The story.
I would then tell a story, the simpler the better. Aesop’s fables work well. I would repeat key pieces of vocabulary and use pictures to help those participants who would ordinarily struggle to follow a narrative. - A follow-up task.
This could be as simple as asking participants to re-tell the story to each other or to share a story that they know.
If you would like to know more about creative practice in language cafés, please contact me.