CASE STUDIES, TRAINING PROJECTS, WORKSHOPS AND EVENTS:
The Horniman Museum
Schools Education Team Training

Situation:
The Horniman Museum wanted to re fresh how they used storytelling with schools. They asked us to create a selection of practical storytelling and story creation activities, suitable for Foundation to Key Stage 3, for use by teachers before, during and after a visit to the museum, which would compliment activities led by museum facilitators.

Solution:
Over 1-day we led the Learning team through our key storytelling and story creating activities and explored specific ways to adapt each one to suit different age ranges and different outcomes.

Results:
The Schools and Education team found the day fun, inspiring and useful, and will be including ideas TheWholeStory brought to: re-invigorate sessions, especially the nursery rhyme story technique for foundation stage groups; consider how to involve objects more to develop their storytelling and maintain their high standard of storytelling through the methodology for learning and telling stories; and to offer a variety of year specific activities to teachers and schools through the Learning Pack. As a result of the training the Horniman has rethought the structure of the their Learning Pack so as to be more user friendly, offering ‘at school’ and ‘at the museum’ activities, with a helpful teacher’s section of practical techniques, to enhance their own storytelling, and a story bank of the stories they might encounter in the museum with links to relevant activities.

"We invited The Whole Story to run a session at our conference because we were interested in how their approach could be implemented at our properties. We were overwhelmed by exuberantly positive feedback from the people who attended, and realised we absolutely had to work with them again! We have since worked in partnership with them to work up a pilot for using storytelling to improve the visitor experience at a range of properties across the country and have been impressed by their energy, ideas, positivity and efficiency. Their interactive approach is exactly what we have been looking for, and the workshops they ran have encouraged our staff and volunteers that they too have stories to tell, and they can engage visitors' interest and spark inspiration."


Alex Murphy – Learning, National Trust