Last weekend was the brilliant Stogumber Festival with a diverse range of music, dancing and singing already on their agenda they asked if I would be part of the festivities with a Storywalk. Of course I said yes, but even better would be to work with Stogumber C of E School and involve their pupils in the writing.
After a little preparation I worked up the beginning and end to a story which involved the church gargoyles coming to life and exploring the village. The middle of the story was deliberately left free as I knew this was where the pupils would add their streaks of genius.
On the first morning we stepped out on the secret trail and it immediately became an explorational adventure of 'what if's?' and 'what could happen here?' - which is essential to enable the story to evolve. Children can be incredibly creative and fluid under the right circumstances and when they understand they have the freedom and liberty to do so it can be quite a roller coaster ride of possibilities.
'Long before the sculptors mallet hit chisel, long before the stone itself was lifted from the earth with block and tackle, they slept. Eons of time passed and the rock was compressed and squeezed, heated and formed by mantle pressures, and inside the little ones still slept on. The massive bed rock rose and lifted on unimaginable forces until its peeks became hill tops, and rivers cut valleys through it's heart.'
In the Storywalk world every corner becomes a myriad of possibilities, every crook and dip a place for their 'gargoyle' to explore and investigate. Who made those scratches on that gate? Why is there a dogs bone left here? Who ate it?
In my mind it's the questions which write the stories and the stories which ask the questions, often it is just the starting point with the very first question which is the hardest.
'Chip Chip Chip went the beetle on the chisel and the sense of the beast within began to awaken.'
Thankfully though Stogumber church had these stunning carvings which are a story teller's gift. Interestingly they are know locally as hunky punks rather than gargoyles, the difference being that a gargoyle has a water spout which casts roof water off the battlements, where as the hunky punks are purely decorative and designed to guard the church from evil.
The workshop day with Stogumber School went like a dream, the storywalk engine delivered all elements in order (and where expected) so when back in the class we swiftly mapped up the adventure then embarked on some creative writing. All the pupils are in years 5 and 6, and even with the tight time constraints of a single day, every child was able to write their piece and upload to the storywalk engine.
'On the eighth day The Gargoyles wings were long and transparent as glass. It's teeth as sharp as a knife, super scaly body and he was two metres tall.'
Over the following few days I made the walk 'festival ready' and added a couple of flourishes to balance out the blood thirsty adventures the pupils had written!
Sunday was the final day of the festival and (bar a few technical glitches) the story was very well received. For me this was a single step in engaging with Stogumber school's pupils through Storywalks. In the new year I am due back in as the pupils teacher, Josh Wedderkopp, recently won a grant from the SHINE Trust to raise literacy and learning with his pupils. So in January the very first thing we'll be doing is re-reading and re-walking this story and then go back into the 'what if' questions and see where they take us.
If you would like to integrate a Storywalk with your school, with either myself or Claire Vowell of Norton St Philip school Frome, then please do get in touch. For Storywalk experience days we arrive equipped with 3G iPads and a story ready to roll, together we will read, then geolocate new text by your pupils, and hopefully ignite their imaginations through making literature a little more physical.
For more info please see storywalks.info
