Discover is seeking three community partners in Newham to help recruit participants for Discover’s Newham Stories Programme. The program is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund with the aim of empowering families and residents of Newham to share and celebrate their diverse heritage and culture through storytelling.
About the Project
- Discover’s Newham Stories aims to empower parents from across the diversity of Newham’s residents to share and explore their customs, traditions, and practices through storytelling.
- We are seeking partnerships with Newham community organisations that work with local families to recruit participants from diverse storytelling cultures. These individuals will engage in eight interactive workshop sessions from April to July to explore their culture and heritage through storytelling.
- The workshops will be facilitated by artists from diverse storytelling cultures and various storytelling-related art forms such as poetry, theatre, and comedy. They will be supported by Discover’s Story Builders, who will contribute their expertise in telling stories from a wide variety of cultural sources while considering the intersectionality of different traditions.
- Following these exploratory and sharing sessions, participants will be trained by the artists to gain the skills and confidence to tell their own and others’ stories. Group leaders of the family groups will receive professional support to organise a Showcase and Storytelling Exchange Day.
- A filmmaker will also be commissioned to capture people’s stories and produce a short film for public distribution on our streaming channels.
Our target audience
- Newham’s residents and parents who have an interest in sharing their culture and tradition through storytelling.
Capacity
- 20 parents from each community partner.
Content of the programme
- Eight-session workshop for 20 families focused on culture and heritage through storytelling (once a week, w/c 6 May – 1 July, with a break during half term).
- A rehearsal session with the participants for the final showcase day (w/c 8 July).
- A Mentoring Workshop to support group leaders of the workshops (2 members from each group) in planning out the showcase day and being facilitators in activities that would help participants from the 3 groups to investigate and share their storytelling approaches and routines with each other (w/c 15 July).
- A Showcase and Storytelling Exchange Day where participants will perform their work at Discover, and the group leaders will facilitate activities (w/c 22 July).
