Openstorytellers is a charity based in Frome, Somerset, which emerged from a Lottery-funded project sponsored by the British Institute for Learning Disabilities from 2004-2007. They work all over the country and internationally. Their mission is to enable people with learning and communication difficulties to tell stories – of all kinds. Director, and story teller, Nicola Grove explains what it’s all about…
“The thing is – we all have stories, don’t we?”
This was the amazing statement made by one of our storytellers with learning disabilities, at the end of our very first public performance of a King Arthur legend at the Glastonbury town fete in 2005.
The story we had told with our company was the tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney, whose experiences – of leaving home as a young man, being bullied and disparaged, working in kitchens, and succeeding against all the odds – resonated strongly with their own lives. Many of our 14 storytellers had grown up in institutions; they had attended special schools, they now lived and worked in segregated settings, taking low paid service jobs. Things have changed in the last ten years – but not all that much!
Great narrator
We had come to the end of the story. Brian (now a trustee of the charity, whose autobiography is about to be published) is a great narrator and actor who can work an audience like a professional. He has an extraordinary skill in getting the last word. In the film of the event, you can see me at the edge, trying to stop him, as I thought we had really finished. Instead, he stepped forward, spread his hands, and delivered this statement to the 50 members of public who had turned up to hear us tell… “We all have stories, don’t we?”
We all have stories. But not all of us are able to tell them in ways that others will hear.
Our storytelling company explores legends and histories that are relevant to people’s experience. Our research has shown that people with learning disabilities and autism seem to be found in some of our earliest myths and folktales.
Wrong assumptions
We turn these stories into performances that encourage the audience to question and discuss the way people are represented, and to relate them to their own lives. Take Jack – from Jack and the Beanstalk and many other “Jack” tales, which, by the way, are found all over the world. Jack is often a young man who is portrayed as “simple” or finding it hard to understand what others say. Or he’s lazy, or good for nothing. He always has a good heart, though, and that’s what helps him to win through. In Jack’s Review, we imagine his annual meeting with his care manager, mother and employer, all of whom are finding him a bit of a challenge. Through telling a series of stories, Jack gets them to see what he can achieve, and where they are making some wrong assumptions.
Another of our performances centres on the story of Peter the Wild Boy, a real character from the 18th century, whose case was recently publicised by the historian Lucy Worsley. We base our workshop on a pamphlet written by the contemporary journalist and novelist, Daniel Defoe, who asks the question of his readers – can someone who does not talk be said to have a soul? You’ll have to see our performance to find out; or you can read a discussion of his case by our storytellers in a forthcoming book chapter (see end of article for details).
Classics brought to life
Openstorytellers is an inclusive charity and one of our main concerns and interests is to engage people who have severe and profound disabilities in storytelling – whether fictional or personal. We run multi-sensory book clubs, where classic works of literature are brought to life using the original text, backed up by movement, dance, music, illustrations and objects to feel, smell and touch. In Treasure Island, for example, you get to rifle through the pockets of the corpse of Billy Bones, as the clock ticks, the fog creeps in, and the tap tap tap of Blind Pew’s stick warns you of approaching danger.
Our main work, though, is centred on working with staff, families and people with severe disabilities themselves to recall and share the small stories of everyday life. Through our certificated programme, Storysharing®, hundreds of children and adults who cannot speak for themselves have begun to recall and share what happens in their lives. Sometimes these are the unexpected, funny events – when the horse ate Margaret’s prize rose; when a teacher fell, fully clothed into the swimming pool, when the bus got stuck in the mud and we all got wet pulling it out.
Sometimes they are the tricky unexpected things we deal with by telling the story over and over again to come to terms with it.
Sometimes, however, even small events can be used to bring a community together and to reflect on what we share and how important everyone is – like when the cat goes to the vet and we remember what it’s like to be ill. This programme, funded by the Hamlyn Foundation, has been taken up by service providers and schools in the UK and abroad, to provide a truly person-centred and accessible way of giving people a history and a voice.
The services and project we run are all designed to celebrate the contribution that people with learning disabilities can make to our society and are centred around the belief that, yes, we all have stories, and they are all worth hearing.
For more information: www.openstorytellers.org.uk
The discussion about Peter the Wild Boy will appear in ‘What Peter means to us’ by Grove N et al in ‘Intellectual disability: a conceptual history from the medieval law courts to the great incarceration’ eds. Chris Goodey, Patrick McDonagh and Tim Stainton, to be published in 2016.
To read more by Nicola Grove and others about storytelling:
Grove, N. (2015) “Finding the sparkle: storytelling in the lives of people with learning disabilities”, Tizard Learning Disability Review, 20, pp. 29 – 36
Grove, N. (Ed.) (2013) Using Storytelling to Support Children and Adults with Special Needs: Transforming lives through telling tales. Taylor and Francis
