St Mary Magdalen’s storytelling project

The school council (6 – 11year olds) and the year 4 and 5 Gifted and Talented group worked over one week with the LIFT team of artists, Sue Mayo, Dan Scott and Polly Beestone.  Inspired by the London 2012 Olympic Games they devised their own special event for the school community, a performance that transformed the school building into a living, breathing archive, with storytellers escaping from hidden cupboards and performing to every classroom around the school.

Exploring LIFT's archive at Goldsmiths

The week began with a trip to the LIFT Living Archive at Goldsmiths Library. Elizabeth Williams (Assistant Librarian and Research Support for the Special Collections at Goldsmiths) gave the pupils an introduction to Special Collections and the protocol of handling such precious documents.  You can’t use a biro, we were told, because it might mark the paper, so how were we going to take notes?  Clearly getting into the spirit of all things old and past one boy suggested we could use a feather!

After putting on special white gloves to protect the documents, Sue gave the children a range of materials, including a list of props and an article from a french newspaper, and asked them to try and find out what it was all about.  Like true detectives they began to piece together the clues.  Could it be about an orphanage? A list of things to be taken when you move house?  In fact, the documents all came from Buchettino a show by an Italian theatre company, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, which came to London for LIFT 2001, the same year that many of the children were born.  Buchettino is an immersive performance where the audience of all ages lie in bunk beds listening to an actor tell the story of Tom Thumb whilst frightening sound effects are heard all around them. You can find out more about Buchettino on the LiftLivingArchive.

Back at school the children also explored the school’s archive which contained a treasure trove of photos, a calendar, a ledger and a punishment book dating back to the 1920s.  With all this rich material, the children were facilitated by Sue to build their own stories inspired by elements from the school archive and the seven Olympic values.  Dan’s team of sound artists created sound-pieces to accompany the stories, and Polly worked with the children to make small and large boxes that would hold the storytellers’ precious objects.  Each box was decorated to represent the theme of its particular story.  Final tweaks were made and by Friday lunchtime the children were ready to share their week's hard work with the rest of the school.

The Performance

After a busy and creative week it was finally time for the specially invited guests; parents, elders and school governors, to arrive.  As the visitors took their seats in classrooms across the school, the storytellers and their sound assistants carried their boxes to their hiding places, large walk-in cupboards scattered around the school. The whole school, from reception to year 6, was treated to a liveley story-telling performance, with  each tale beginning by the rhyme:

Hello everybody, have some fun,
Get your ears to the beat of the story drum
Mmhmmm, mmhmmm
Listen to the words that fly like birds
Relax and chill so we can be heard

The celebration was an opportunity to share the experiences of St Mary Magdalen's community, past and present.  After the performances the participants and special guests gathered again in the hall to get a closer look at the archive and the elders shared their memories of the school. The first thing the children wanted to know of course was whether they had ever experienced the cane?!