Storytelling – a Common Wealth
By Vayu Naidu
There are definitions from Elizabethan England since the sixteenth century about the Commonwealth. The term evolved in many strands, but let’s look at an immediate one that injected a feel good factor this blazing summer – The Commonwealth Games.
Whatever else it did, it brought the world to Birmingham and celebrated Birmingham’s diversity too.
Mansfield Green Primary E-ACT Academy, recommended by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery was a case at point. It swirls with 40 languages, independent ethnic identities, with second and third generation parents and teachers.
Following the pandemic it was and is my intention to draw through Storytelling a HUB – a common wealth of mental health between isolated parents for whom English is not a native language while sending their children to one that is primarily instructed in English.
The theme was FRIENDSHIP . Following a Panchantantra inspired tale about Friendship featuring the monkey and crocodile and what integrity and responsibilty it entails, I engaged parents and children to work together with a shard of a memory from the parent to their children who illustrated it. This covered a range of subjects to – history, geography, and culture and in English with the use of other languages and expressions.
How does one evaluate the enthusiasm of the parents having to share a story with their children – about themselves and what it meant to leave things behind and make a new life? As women, as parents.
It seemed the teachers found it good too.
