News: Nottingham College Hosts Story Valley Programme Launch Event

Story Valley Launch at Nottingham College

Nottingham College partnered with the National Literacy Trust to pilot the Story Valley programme, a free, fully resourced storytelling programme designed to run alongside creative courses, with the aim of building students’ literacy skills in an engaging, creative way and fostering integration and collaboration between local and migrant students.

The programme launch event, held on Thursday 25 May, showcased student work from Nottingham College and provided a flexible framework for students to complete a creative project using a story at its core.

The event included an exhibition of student work from Nottingham College, where the programme was piloted, as well as programme developers from colleges and arts organisations in Edinburgh, Leewarden, Friesland and Nottingham explaining how the programme works and hosting a live Q&A for attendees.

Kyle Turakhia, who represents the National Literary Trust, explained, “The project has four modules: first, find the story from your local area or own experiences; second, tell the story; third, get creative and adapt it based on your curriculum course, such as creative writers writing or hairdressers using hair; and fourth, share your work, and today is the exhibit of that.

What stood out to me really is that Nottingham College has not had long to put it together, yet they’ve used the resources really well and developed really interesting projects. They seem to have shared some quite personal stories, which is always quite difficult to do, and it’s lovely to see they’ve had that vulnerability. And in such a short time, they have seemed to do some quite special work.”

Kirsty Haughton, advanced practitioner for English, shared that “Literacy and getting our learners to engage with storytelling is a real passion for me so I’ve created a really firm partnership with the National Literacy Trust, and as part of that, Story Valley.

They introduced us to this project, and myself and Hannah have worked really hard together to try and bring this project to life at the college so our students can tell stories in a range of different ways because storytelling is so important. And our students deserve the opportunity, so we are engaging in the city, which is fantastic, and partnered with different colleges from around the world.”

Overall, the Story Valley programme launch event was a great success, showcasing the creativity and talent of students from Nottingham College and beyond. It was a fantastic opportunity for students to develop their literacy skills while working on creative projects, and it is clear that the programme has the potential to have a real impact on the lives of students from all backgrounds.