ON THURSDAY CHILDREN ALL over the country came home from school and pestered their families to tell them stories about their past and their ancestors.
This was because the Prince of Wales wanted them to. His Arts and Kids charity is behind Storyquest, a nationwide project to encourage the telling of stories in public and private over the next few months. Schools received an imaginative publication suggesting activities to stimulate storytelling, and children were asked to find a tale to retell.
In Mexico, Thursday was the Day of the Dead when families gather to celebrate their history. It was hoped that stories would be told in homes around the dinner table, encouraging not only what Prince Charles calls “passing down the stories that make up our shared cultural heritage” but also “the dying art of eating together”.
The Prince believes that passing down such knowledge is “one of the most important things that we, as parents and grandparents, teachers, aunts and uncles, musicians and artists, can do for young people”. There are few families in which personal history does not throw light on wider events. Think of all those grandparents who can recall the Blitz, or evacuation or being called up, escaping the Holocaust, the end of Empire, Partition, the SS Windrush . . .
No doubt the Prince has a few good family stories of his own. But even if the stories told to children are anecdotes about the day they were born, or adopted, or the things that they said as toddlers — and sometimes stories in which they figure are more interesting to children than ones in which they don’t — telling them imparts a sense of identity, encourages verbal skills, teaches them to listen and knits families together.
Storyquest is not just reaching into schools and homes. Hundreds of stories — historical and fantastical, new and traditional — are being told in historic houses, art galleries, public gardens and shopping centres between now and Christmas.
They are aimed at children aged from under 1 to over 16. The project began last week at the Unicorn Theatre in South London, where an Irish bagpiper led a line of children to meet the storytellers Ben Haggarty, Jan Blake and Hugh Lupton.
The project, supported by the London Centre for International Storytelling, has no government funding, and its principal sponsor is Land Securities Group, which owns shopping centres. So there will be storytelling in marquees at the Gunwharf Keys Centre in Portsmouth on the afternoon of Bonfire Night, followed by fireworks. On the same afternoon children can hear stories about fire at the Seven Stories, the Centre for the Children’s Book, in Newcastle upon Tyne, or curl up with cushions and hot drinks in Wimborne, Dorset, to hear Dark Tales for Dark Nights.
There will also be, to name but a few, Islamic tales in the National Museum in Cardiff today; Story- telling Sundays at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool; spooky stories and mulled cider in the Saxon Hall in Stourport, Worcestershire (on November 11); Asian tales with music, dance and slides in Rotherham (November 11); stories with puppets in Canterbury (November 18); personalised stories in Stafford (December 9); poetry and comedy celebrating fatherhood in Wood Green, North London (December 16); riverside tales at Henley, with kits to help to invent your own (December 16); and an event that would surely appeal to the Prince: Talking Trees in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, on three Sundays in December.
If you cannot make it to a local event, you can share the experience at home. Try some suggestions from the Storyquest brochure: tell jokes, ghost stories or family anecdotes. Make story tapes. Draw story boards. Tell half a story to one child and half to another, and get them to take turns in telling each other the whole. Play games in which stories are told around objects, or gabbled at speed to someone who tries to repeat them. Or tell stories based on place names. That sounds good to me.
Nicolette Jones, who lives in Plimsoll Road, is the author of The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea (Little, Brown)
Visit artsandkids.org.uk, storyquest.org.uk, or, for a full list of Storyquest events, go to tinyurl.com/y73xpc
The London Centre for International Storytelling is at thelcis.org.uk