Blue-sky story telling adventure day

Impact report: Collaborating with families and communities to prepare children for learning through reading, writing, and theatre.

On Wednesday 31st May 2023, parents, children, advocates, non government organisations and policymakers were invited to a one day event entitled ‘Blue Sky Storytelling Adventures’. The event was run in partnership with a community centre, Bridge2, which has a long history of being a multi-purpose, multi-cultural space in Toxteth, a densely populated and socio-demographically diverse area of Liverpool. In total 19 caregivers and 39 children between the ages of 4 and 11 registered for the event. On the day we had 9 caregivers and 12 children between the ages of 4 and 11 who participated.

The aim of the event was to promote understanding and implementation of evidence-based practices in supporting children’s reading, writing, and creative expression. Routed in evidence based research literature, including that of our own research, three interactive storytelling performances were run by our partners: The Reader, Writing on the Wall and Drama & Theatre students from the creative campus. These performances were run by the group facilitator from each respective organisation.

The Reader’s performance focused on shared book reading, nursery rhymes and craft activities. Reading books with children has been shown to support a range of language skills and exposure to new words builds their vocabulary. The more they hear spoken language, the more easily they can use it themselves. Writing on the Wall focused on initiatives to support creative writing through the Superheroes: Words are our Power project. Writing is an important lifelong skill and children need to learn to write so they can communicate and express themselves. The Drama & Theatre studies students’ performance focused on role play in developing creative ideas. Story drama and sociodramatic play enable children to exercise and develop various social and cognitive skills including verbal communication and perspective taking. Importantly, language development underpins reading, writing and creativity. Caregivers and children were encouraged to actively participate in these activities. Following the activities a free lunch was provided and after the performances all beneficiaries were invited to participate in parallel roundtable discussions to provide feedback on the event, and contribute their thoughts and feelings regarding risk factors related to learning; and possible initiatives to promote positive engagement. To ensure families continued to talk together after the event, and implement some of the techniques they had learned, they were each given a 'conversation pack' of materials to take away, including some top tips about sharing stories, developing writing with children, and supporting creativity.

Impact of the event

In order to establish the impact of the event on both caregivers and children, a number of quantitative and qualitative measures were assessed. First, caregivers and children were asked how often they currently engaged in drama, writing, and reading at home, as well as how often in the future they planned to engage in these activities. The findings are illustrated in Figure 1. They showed that there were significant increases in families' intentions to engage in all three activities as a result of attending the Blue Sky Storytelling Adventure day. Specifically, the data showed that there was a 60% increase in families’ intentions to engage in drama activities in the future, a  35% increase in families’ intentions to engage in writing activities in the future, and a 15% increase in families’ intentions to engage in reading activities in the future.

Figure 1: Frequency of engaging in activities before (pre) and after (post) families’ participation in the event. Frequency of engaging in activities are scored as follows: 1 = not very often, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often, 4 = very often.

In addition, feedback from children’s experience of the day showed that level of enjoyment was rated at 91%, level of fun was rated at 88%, and likelihood of participating in a similar event in the future was rated at 97%. Parents provided email addresses to be signposted to similar events in the future.  They suggested that there was a lack of access to sessions such as this, particularly after school. 

Qualitative insights revealed that parents and children hugely enjoyed the event and many noted their intention to be more interactive with their child as a result of attending the event, particularly for activities such as drama. It was also noted that the interactive nature of the activities encourage children to engage both with facilitators, and with parents and children too. A number of themes emerged from the roundtable discussions too. The event was seen as a welcoming and novel opportunity to do something together with different children and families. It was remarked that the activities felt unique and that these activities gave families ideas for learning. In particular, facilitators stated that observing parents engaging in the activity really matters for learning. In addition, reciprocal learning was seen as particularly important as it emphasises the interaction between children and parents. It meant that during the sessions, the child had the approval of the parent which meant they wanted to showcase their work back to the parent. Many of the parents highlighted their desire to attend similar events in the future.

One of the challenges of the event was that it was difficult to match children in each group on age. However, it was noted that a strength of not matching children meant that parents were much more involved. Indeed, it was remarked by one of the parents that age was an enabler because different age groups inspired each other in the activities, empowering younger children through collaborative learning and scaffolding. Finally, it was noted by Turkish families that the event was an excellent opportunity for children to practise their English skills and also to interact with children from different cultures.

Future impact plans

We have identified a number of future actions as a result of running this event. We will

1. Run future events in different areas of Liverpool, broadening participation, more activities and including older children (as indicated in feedback).

2. Facilitate access to creative writing and drama activities.

3. Co-create resources with families and communities for at-home interventions, including activity packs to improve reading and writing in the home context.

4. Facilitate round-table discussions with councillors, local leaders, headteachers and parents to work towards developing stable opportunities (e.g., weekly after school) for children and their parents to enjoy collaborative learning.

5. Develop a follow-up protocol to understand more about the long-term impact of events, and where and when further support is needed.