1000 Better Stories - Winterings

 

For our final episode of 2020, we present Winterings, a selection box of festive treats – book recommendations from some of our previous guests and some wintery themed eco-folk tales for you to enjoy by the fireside, or crunching through the morning frost, featuring Snow Bees, Christmas Spiders and a marvellous telling of The Twelve Months by Allison Galbraith.

1000 Better Stories - Infinite Imagination

 

In October, I spent a few days virtually visiting the transition town of Dunbar to hear all about the work of development trust Sustaining Dunbar and to reflect on the life, work and resonance of conservationist John Muir.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of being able to visit Dunbar for real, working with The Ridge to create a comic which you can read for free online.

Making Waves

In the Before Times, back in the mists of "earlier this year", I worked as part of Inverclyde Libraries Making Waves project - developing and promoting local libraries as cultural hubs, spaces where creative activity can happen every day.

Our project was a comic club, The Splash Panel, which worked with a group of young people to create and share their own comic stories and explore how we read comics. We also collaborated on a 4 page comic, illustrated by Robin Henley, one of the winners of last years 2000AD / Thought Bubble talent search.

You can see all the wonderful community creativity on display, including our comic Kaiju attack on Greenock at the projects virtual exhibition.

Galoshans

All this week, I've been reading ghost stories for the Galoshans Festival, Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebration.

Tonights story is a little different, it's a reading from a work in progress, which is a little more horror based than the other stories. Maybe a 12A - 15 rating, depending on how scared you get of things.

Or maybe, I'm the one who's a big fearty and actually it's fine...

Galoshans Ghost Stories - The Berry Yards

 

I'm sharing ghost stories as part of Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebrations, The Galoshans Festival.

These stories are maybe a bit scary for younger audiences, I'd rate them 12A.

Unless you want a wee fright, in which case, yer fine.

Galoshans Ghost Stories - At The Pass of the Bodies

 

I'm sharing ghost stories as part of Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebrations, The Galoshans Festival.

These stories are maybe a bit scary for younger audiences, I'd rate them 12A.

Unless you want a wee fright, in which case, yer fine.

Galoshans Ghost Stories - Gaki

 

I'm sharing ghost stories as part of Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebrations, The Galoshans Festival.

These stories are maybe a bit scary for younger audiences, I'd rate them 12A.

Unless you want a wee fright, in which case, yer fine.

I maybe enjoyed myself a bit too much with the video for this one, but in my defence, I did used to program lots of text adventures on my 48k.

Galoshans Ghost Stories - The Buried Alive

I'm sharing ghost stories as part of Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebrations, The Galoshans Festival.

These stories are maybe a bit scary for younger audiences, I'd rate them 12A.

Unless you want a wee fright, in which case, yer fine.

Galoshans Ghost Stories - The Leerie

 

I'm sharing ghost stories as part of Inverclyde's traditional Hallowe'en celebrations, The Galoshans Festival.

These stories are maybe a bit scary for younger audiences, I'd rate them 12A.

Unless you want a wee fright, in which case, yer fine.

The Leerie was originally published in Haunted Voices - An Anthology of Scottish Gothic Storytelling, and is used with the permission of Haunt Publishing.

1000 Better Stories - Black Lives Matter

 

Professor Sir Geoff Palmer shares his thoughts on the intersection between climate change and racial justice.

Last year, I worked on a project which Sir Geoff Palmer was part of, in which Finzean Primary School in Aberdeenshire, explored the links between their community and the slave trade. 

You can read and download the graphic novel we created, Aye, It Wis Aabody via Magic Torch Comics ISSUU page.

1000 Better Stories - Lost Woods and Forgotten Orchards

 

Looking for inspiration from the outdoors, we chat with Alex Mackenzie of The Lost Woods and Emily Reid of Eco Drama, two projects based in Glasgow who are inspiring young people in their communities to think differently about urban spaces.

1000 Better Stories - Art and Gardens

Over the summer, I've started work with SCCAN - the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network. And over the next 9 months, I'll be creating a podcast which explores community led approached to climate action.

Like so much else right now, it's a strange time to be having conversations with people about the future, but the climate emergency has not disappeared in the face of the pandemic - and in fact, one of the things the community response to the pandemic has shown is that need for resiliency.

In this first episode, I start my podcast journey close to home, in Inverclyde, speaking to Belville Community Garden and RIG Arts.

Silly Squad

 

 

I was pleased to be involved with the Summer Reading Challenge Silly Squad over the holidays - and as things aren't quite back to normal, and class visits aren't back on track everywhere quite yet, the team at the Scottish Libraries and Information Council are keeping videos up online for a little longer. 

Here's mine...and you can see lots of other cool writers and artists on the channel too.

Sharing Stories - Wee Nasties

While I was turning my lockdown living room into a makeshift Jackanory studio, I recorded a version of my poem Wee Nasties as a test run for how to put the stories together.

It's been almost fifteen years since I wrote this, seven since we published it as a book, and I still enjoy reading it in schools and libraries.

And there's certainly a direct line between this and the work Mhairi and I did for the Sharing Stories project - not least the guest appearances by the Mermaid and the Frog...

Sharing Stories - Fatima

Of all the stories we were told, I think this was my favourite.

All of the women around the table were familiar with the character of Fatima, a female hero sent on a quest into the woods - just like in The Well at the Worlds End. The story has so many classic archetypes and symbols - maiden, stepmother, witch, well, transformation. There's so much to unpack and enjoy. And even though we were familiar with the Snow White / Cinderella elements of the story there were parts which were absolutely new to us. Mhairi's final illustration for this story effectively reflects some of the darkness of the story, and it's by far my favourite in the book.

It's also the longest story to tell, so settle in...

A version of the story read in Arabic can be heard on youtube.

Sharing Stories - The Wolf at the Door

One of the first stories I was told for this project was the story of Fatima's Children. I was chatting with Tamadour and she just told it right off the top of her head - and I didn't have my recording kit with me! Fatima is a Snow White / Cinderella type character, who turns up in a few stories (including the final story we will be sharing this week) In Tamadour's story, she leaves her children at home while she goes out to work.

Some weeks later, Ilona, Alison and I visited Rouzine to talk about Kurdish traditions and folklore - much of which had been suppressed in Syria. Mostly we talked about the Newroz tradition and the King under the hill - but then Roijin spoke to us about Shengay and Pengay, which features two sheep left at home by their mother while she goes out for food.

Both are "wolf at the door" stories featuring a dangerous male character attempting to gain entry to a house. And of course we are perhaps more familiar with the version in which a wolf tries to get into the houses of the Three Little Pigs.

Our version of the story of Shengay and Pengay can be heard below, and there's a Kurdish version on youtube.

Thankfully, I did eventually manage to get Tamadour to record her Fatima's Children story too, which you can also hear below.

Sharing Stories - The King and the Water Seller

The King and the Water Seller story arrived at the point when I realised the Sharing Stories project was starting to come together. We had spent a few weeks with an ESOL group supported by Inverclyde Community Learning and Development, and the first few weeks were mostly hilariously awkward attempts to bridge the language gaps and generally plunging down into them instead.

But on this week, we finally established a rhythm, of reading, translating, scribbling and sketching - a collaborative effort to get from the start of a story all the way to the end. It was great. And once we had all figured out that this was how we needed to do it, the stories just kept coming...

An Arabic version can be heard on youtube.

Sharing Stories - The Mermaid

I've returned to the story of the mermaid in the River Clyde many times, she's in my book Wee Nasties, guest stars in the Rowan Tree Legion comic, has a number of stories on this blog - and it's one of my proudest achievements that we managed to get her commemorated on a heritage bench which sits in Port Glasgow town centre.

So when we were deciding which stories to share, there was never any doubt, we'd be telling our mermaid tale...

A version in Arabic is available on youtube

Sharing Stories - The Royal Earring

In the early stages of the Sharing Stories project, we looked to what other projects had done successfully to generate understanding and discussion around folk tales. We found out about the Timeless Tales project, which had been collecting Syrian folk tales in particular, generally within refugee camps. We used one of these previously collected stories - The King's Daughter's Earring, to share and explain the type of tale we were looking for, and heard a blended variation in return.

What immediately struck us, given that we were looking for connections, was that this story seemed to share the symbolism of the ring and the fish that we know from the story of Saint Mungo of Glasgow - so we decided it would fit nicely with our developing river / water theme.

An Arabic language version is available on youtube.

Sharing Stories - The Old Man and the Apple Seller

This was one of the last stories we were told, in the last week of the project. Amal explained that her husband had been telling the story to his children each night over the phone, while waiting to come and join them in Inverclyde. We were delighted when Amal agreed to record us a version of the story which you can hear below, and then you can listen to our translation.

Sharing Stories - The Well at the Worlds End

Part of our role in the Sharing Stories project was to find Scottish stories which complimented or echoed the stories we had heard from Syria or Sudan. We chose The Well at the Worlds End, because we heard a few different variations of the story in which a young woman is sent into the woods to fetch something - a sieve, some water -usually from a magical source.

This story also blends in elements of the more familiar Frog Prince story, but with something much more unexpected than a kiss to break that spell...

A version in Arabic is available on youtube.

Sharing Stories

For the last year, as part of my work with Magic Torch Comics CIC, I've been working with Inverclyde Community Development Trust on their Sharing Stories project – which is funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund. Our part in the process, was to create a book of illustrated folk tales with stories from Scotland, Syria and Sudan.

The project developed directly from a comic we worked on a few years back, which had young people from recently arrived Syrian families, learning about the myths and legends of their new home town and creating a story and a learning resource related to Children’s Rights.

At the time that project felt like the first part of a conversation; we’d told our stories, and now, it was time for us to listen and hear stories back. We all know that stories, folklore, heritage – culture, can be lost during displacement, and we all felt this was one way of keeping elements of culture alive, and finding out more about one another in the process.

One of the things that worked well about the Sharing Stories project was it being housed within an organisation which was already running some services with Inverclyde’s New Scots community, in particular, a befriending programme – so we were able to tap into that. For example, Roijin invited us along to her house a few times for amazing coffee, to tell us all about Newroz and Kurdish culture. Eventually she chose the story of Shengay and Pengay, two sheep who are left alone in the house when their mother goes out. It’s a “wolf at the door” style story, where a character, is trying to trick their way into a house. We heard a few different variations.

And what we had set out to do, was hear as many stories as possible, find some with some common themes or symbols and then find a few Scottish tales that would also echo those themes. Because there’s a universality to stories, symbols and archetypes obviously repeat across cultures and we wanted to produce a book that reflected that.

Obviously, the language differences were a challenge in the project – that was almost the whole point. We spent a fair bit of time with an ESOL group supported by Inverclyde Community Learning and Development - and the first few weeks were just polite chaos, but gradually we established a rhythm. Members of the group would come in with written down texts of stories, which they would read and then another member of the group would translate into English and I would scribble it down, or we’d use google translate to try and figure it out, and all the while, Mhairi would be sitting sketching the characters we were talking about and checking if this is how they should look in our story book.

Eventually we whittled the group of stories down to 8 – which was tricky, because towards the end we were suddenly getting more and more suggestions. And the stories we chose all feature water or rivers in some way, which seemed fitting given that we’re down in Greenock, right on the banks of the Clyde.

I think genuinely my favourite day in the project, was when we finally convinced Tamadour and Amal to record their stories. You can hear their versions of The Old Man and The Apple Seller and Fatima on soundcloud.

The book was due to launch in April at our local library at an event with families of everyone involved – of course, that’s been put on hold for just now. Hopefully we’ll get that happening later in the year. 

Meantime, The Trust’s project worker Ilona proposed getting them online in a few alternative formats, so for the next two weeks, we will be sharing a story each day in two different versions – one read by me in English and the other read in Arabic or Kurmanji. Here’s the first one below, from Sudan, the story of Lion and Rabbit.

Ito the rabbit is a trickster, often associated with Anansi and Brer Rabbit, and there was certainly a lot of chat and laughter about how Assad the Lion was the typical arrogant leader who values strength and fear above leadership. I think you can maybe guess who comes out best...

Be Your Own Audiobook - Tell A Story

The other day, I received an email from a Scottish teacher currently teaching English in an international school in China. In her message, Joanna explained that before the school broke up for New Year holidays, she had been reading my book The Superpower Project to her class. Of course, school did not return after the holidays; instead, pupils found themselves stuck indoors due to coronavirus quarantine measures. Joanna and teachers like her, have been making the best of the situation, trying to keep pupils upbeat and focussed, by teaching online as best they can. Joanna had been recording herself reading chapters of The Superpower Project and sending them to the class – a chapter every day, read aloud. She wondered if I would be able to send an email to the class, wishing them well and encouraging them to keep listening and reading.

Writers are often delicate folk and everyone writes in different ways about different things for different reasons. However, the one thing I would say most writers have in common is that they like to know people are enjoying reading their stories. And not just in the traditional “please leave an amazon review” way. You made something, someone likes it. That’s nice.

More importantly though, if I take myself out of the situation, Joanna’s email was just this brilliant reminder of how important books and reading can be in times of crisis. And how fortunate for writers and readers alike, that there’s this incredible world of people, booksellers, bloggers, librarians and teachers, who can help you find just the story you need in those moments.

It’s been four years this month since The Superpower Project was published, five years this month since I finished the first draft and entered it in the Kelpies Prize. That’s a long time in books. And though I never did quite get my proposed sequel together, it’s delightful to know that people are still reading my book, and that it’s providing some comfort. (For the record, the sequel was going to have Antarctic explorer Birdie Bowers discovering a spaceship during the Terra Nova expedition, a collection of musical superweapons designed by James Watt, plus all our heroes developed more superpowers and also there was an alien spider queen. I’ll be the first to admit it was a bit messy.)

So, I recorded myself reading a few chapters of The Superpower Project and sent them on to Joanna, and we’ve agreed that the class are going to send me some questions to answer. Sort of a long distance Live Literature session. We’ll keep in touch. These days, it feels good to make connections like that.

As we head towards World Book Day, with all the costumes and additional activities that can sometimes entail, its definitely important to remember that the thing children will respond to most – is being read books. The research proves it. And it’s not just children and young people, you can read to grown ups too. You can even just read out loud to yourself. It's not weird, it's fine. In fact. there’s lots of accessible ways to tell stories for all audiences.

This world book day, if you can, read someone a story– it might just make their day.

Here’s one I read earlier, Superhero Supermarket, which originally appeared in Storytime Magazine Issue 34.

2020 Visions

At this particular point in my life, I'm extremely lucky, because everything I do is about stories. And in addition to my own writing, and work with digital storytelling, I also run Magic Torch Comics CIC, which works with schools, community groups and organisations, to tell stories using comics.

Magic Torch Comics are looking forward to a busy 2020, and it’s off to a flying start, as we were named one of The Big Issue’s Top 100 changemakers for 2020. It’s a great list, full of amazing people and projects, and we are delighted to be a part of it.

Magic Torch Comics have lots of projects happening and comics launching in the first half of 2020, and I thought we would share them with you now, so you know what to look out for. 

In March, we have two books launching on World Book Day (Thursday 8 March) – a collection of Gaelic Folktales created with the Callander’s Landscape project, and a story book of Syrian, Somalian, Kurdish and Scottish folktales produced with Inverclyde Community Development Trust and local ESOL learners supported by Inverclyde Community Learning and Development. And later that month, we'll be showcasing the work of the young people we've worked with on Inverclyde Libraries Making Waves project.

In April, we’ll be launching 1820 – The Paisley Radicals at Paisley Comicon. The book is illustrated by Dylan Gibson and the project was funded by Paisley CHEF fund. It will be previewed at Paisley Book Fest at our Make Comics History workshop on Sunday 23rd February.

In July, we will be at Glasgow Comicon, launching the first of our Outside The Box anthologies. Outside The Box works with marginalised young people in the Inverclyde community, to create comics which share their ideas and lived experiences. The project is supported by National Lottery Community Fund and you can see a promo video for the project below.

Back in 2018, we lost our colleague, Andy Lee, who had worked with us since we started making community comics. We had completed a comic with Andy about the life of Scottish Pirate Captain Kidd, but decided to shelve it. However, with the blessing of Andy’s family, we will be releasing the book, I Thought I Was Undone later this year as a charity publication. More details soon.

We will also have a huge range of information comics releasing – created with schools and community groups and sharing information and stories from the Scottish Parliament, Health and Social Care Partnerships and the Poverty Truth Community. We are so delighted with the diversity of projects that we are asked to get involved with. Please keep them coming!

And in the unlikely event that’s not enough comics for you, Magic Torch Comics also hope to launch our first Kickstarter this year, for a comic which explores the story of The Stone of Destiny, released in time for the 70th Anniversary of the theft of the stone this Christmas. Fingers crossed.

There’s more on the slate, but that’s what we can tell you for now. As ever, if you are interested in getting involved in our projects, would like to know more about what we do or even have a potential idea for collaboration, please get in touch.

We'll share lots more on the projects over the next few months, so keep an eye on the blog, twitter and our facebook page to stay up to date.