Situation:
Greenford High School wanted to use their Creative Partnership to improve the writing and grades of their English GCSE students and to see if the input of an artist or creative practitioner could have a measurable effect. The school selected TheWholeStory and asked Creative Partnerships to contact us. We discussed openly the best ways Greenford High School and TheWholeStory could work together: being clear about expectations, outcomes and working methods. We decided to use storytelling as way to create autobiographical stories. The skills learnt would be applicable to all written work, the project would leave the students with a piece of coursework and the workshop contents could be replicated by teachers in the future.

Solution:
The project began collaboratively with planning and training with the teachers whose classes we would be working with. This allowed us to test the workshop and make changes with the teachers, prepare them to be able to lead the workshop themselves and create a scheme of work for the whole project incorporating the workshops led by TheWholeStory. We led 4 workshops, twice with 2 groups of students (90 in total) over a term. We challenged the pupils to take their written work to the next level, by offering them high energy, fully participatory sessions. The workshops included performance to introduce them to “storytelling”, methods to identify subjects and contents, structuring techniques and practical exercises to build and develop their autobiographical stories. We also had time with smaller groups of students to try out other storytelling exercises and develop specific skills as needed by each group. The final workshop ended with storytelling performances of their autobiographies.

Results:
The best of the completed autobiographical stories were selected for a book, which also contains the information required to deliver the workshops in subsequent years. The performances of the stories, at the end of the project, were watched by the Head and the Deputy Head, who commented he had never experienced better speaking or presentation from students at the school. All involved in the project felt they had benefited from it. The pupils’ took part throughout with high levels of concentration, a willingness to always try something new and good old-fashioned hard slog.