News Story

During January’s cold winds, we came together at the warm and cosy Ratho Library, where we developed four weeks of Intergenerational Storytelling Sessions with Primary 7 Pupils and the over-50s seniors club. Here, Communities Programme Assistant Kuba, reflects on the sessions and their impact on those involved!

Our Storytelling sessions were designed with the idea of bringing two groups from the local community together – groups which normally might not bump into each other or share the same space at the same time. With this in mind, we invited storyteller Claire McNicol to expand on our goal and use her skills of working with a variety of people and vast knowledge of Scottish and Irish stories, to not only engage with our chosen groups, but to encourage the power of storytelling in building connections.

We were incredibly pleased to be joined by a great group of P7 pupils from Ratho Primary School, and several enthusiastic and welcoming members of the Ratho Over-60s club. The two groups regularly visit the library, whether it’s due to the neighbourly proximity of the school and library, or from the extracurricular activities they engage with, but these sessions truly brought the two groups together for the first time!

A central theme of the sessions was the meanings of the word ‘Ceilidh’. It’s now commonly associated with a grand event filled with dancing and people. However, this tends to overshadow its true origins, as something that could even be a small gathering of people exchanging stories and songs over a cup of tea! Claire explored this further, recognising how the exchange of stories can be something much shorter and wittier, a joke, a song or a rhyme. Here’s a joke shared by one of the P7 pupils during our first session.

‘Who was the roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table? Sir Cumference!

The sessions began with the simple exchange of stories, from Claire’s initial presentation of classics such as Finn MacCool and the Salmon of Knowledge, to more personal stories of growing up in the Ratho Community from some of the participants. As our sessions developed, we got a greater insight into some of the skills and interests of the participants, including several violin players and some incredibly talented poets. This led to our first ceilidh at Ratho Library, where songs were sung, instruments played, jokes told, and stories shared!

Following the conclusion of the sessions, we spoke to Claire on the importance of storytelling formats such as the ceilidh. She stressed how ‘Our communication skills are constantly being endangered by social media, even when we find ourselves in social settings. I believe bringing storytelling to our communities is the antidote.’ The sessions were a great reminder that as members of communities, we all share the same space, and even though we may be years apart, our stories resemble each other across generations.

Next month, we will be delivering a series of curated events which echo this notion in Ratho Library. Keep an eye out for what’s coming next!

The multi-year Paper Trails project is part of Edinburgh International Book Festival Communities Programme and is made possible by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, The Cruden Foundation and The Ettrick Charitable Trust.