Story Hubs Take Shape
“Kids were talking about the different starting points of stories, and how they might start at the end and have flashbacks. They’re really thinking more on the structure of their story or writing and how they can potentially use an idea to write something.” Andrea Hennessey, Grade 5/6 teacher, Sunshine Primary.
When a teacher gives us feedback such as this after a storymaking workshop with her students, we know we are hitting our goals.
Children getting excited about how to structure their stories. Tick.
Children playing with different ideas. Tick
Children gaining confidence in their own creative voice. Tick.
Sunshine Primary is one of three schools that signed up to pilot Story Hubs in 2019. Story Hubs are inspiring co-designed spaces for children and young people to let loose their unique creativity, imagination and storymaking skills. The other participating schools are Meadows Primary and Copperfield College.
As Hennessey’s feedback shows, the pilot program is off to a flying start in Term 1 of 2019.
We conducted 31 storymaking workshops with students and delivered professional learning sessions for 30 teachers across all three schools.
The workshops and professional learning sessions gave schools a taste of how we approach creativity at 100 Story Building: an approach where there are no wrong answers; where all ideas are respected and listened to; in which the process by which you come to your story is as important as what gets written on paper.
The teachers are alert to the difference this makes for students in their classrooms.
Teacher Darryl Leach, also from Sunshine Primary, reports: “When it works in class, when they’re kind of mulling over how to solve a problem and you see that look [of concentration], you’re like… yes, we got it.”
The next step is to hunker down with each school community to design their unique Story Hub and discuss what programs they will run and how each hub will become a self-sustaining space for the young writers at the school.
The Story Hubs pilot is possible thanks to the generous support of the Aesop Foundation, The Ian Potter Foundation, The Samuel Nissen Charitable Foundation, H & L Hecht Trust, King and McMillan Foundation, the Australian Communities Foundation and our valued individual donors.