What's The Story Lab Project?
The Story Lab project was designed to build on the success of the UK’s national Summer Reading Challenge (SRC). This programme encourages children to continue reading during the UK’s long summer holidays. The theme for the 2012 SRC is StoryLab - a special laboratory where new stories are created.
Bournemouth Libraries decided to build on this idea by designing a programme of events and activities based on stories. The StoryLab project is all about stories - children reading more of them, mixing and experimenting, collecting and sharing, creating and transmitting them. Through remixing and reinterpreting traditional tales the children will produce new stories from old. As well as having storytellers involved in the project, the schools in Bournemouth and Poole can choose whether to tell their stories in printed form or through dance, music or drama. Each school, or class, will select an artist in a different medium to work with the children on their stories.
Bournemouth Libraries was keen that the project should be a global one, with links to the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad’s Literature and Libraries strand which aims to inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially among young people. Each local school has been paired with an overseas partner so that they can swap and share stories. We hope they will also discover much about each other and each other’s countries.
