The Village Storytelling Centre

Project Update:

To hold four sessions over the year via their “Storytelling Cafe” – called “Sangs an’ Clatter” .
These would be an evening/afternoon of Scottish Traditional Storytelling and Music fused with
contemporary stories, songs and even live visual arts that the audience are invited to share in.

The cafe brings traditional storytelling back to the heart of the community. They invite professional
storytellers and musicians to produce high quality artistic performance and work with their partner
hosts to ensure that new audiences, who are unlikely to experience this type of event otherwise, are
attracted and engaged each time.

They ensure that they are delivering them to a wide range of people from different socio-economic
demographics and particularly those who have not accessed these artforms before. At each café, they
aimed to engage a professional storyteller, a professional musician and one of their own storytellers
from The Village Storytelling Centre.

Brief Resume:

The communities who took part in the project were:

• Glasgow North West Young Carers
• 218 Project
• PlatForum
• Possilpoint Community Centre’s Refugee and Asylum Project

They worked with various different artists of different disciplines from an accordionist to a live
cartoonist!

Working with such a range of artists meant that there was a great deal of variety on offer to the
communities across Glasgow and it also meant that they could create bespoke evenings for each of
these communities which were relevant to their interests while also offering new experiences.
Each of these different communities of interest has their own complex barriers as to why they do
not access the arts often or at all. These include financial barriers, caring responsibilities, fear of
travel and not feeling that the arts are ‘for them’ to name a few. This is why it was so important to
bring Sangs an’ Clatter to their own communities in an event specially organised for them.

Outcome/Aims:

The four events were very diverse in terms of content, location, and participants. Each of them provided
the audience with access to a new artform (for many of them), professional musicians and storytellers
and an opportunity to engage in traditional culture.

Many of the participants would not have been able to participate in this type of event if the organisers
had not been able to bring it to them and the places they either lived or regularly attended. The Village
Storytelling Centre through this project promoted traditional artforms and gave their participants a
truly high quality, professional arts experience and showed them that ‘the arts’ could be and should be
accessible for everyone