Tiny Wonders

Tiny Wonders is on CBeebies just now. It started during the Christmas holidays and it continues every day on the CBeebies channel until February. If you don’t get a chance to watch it live, you can catch up on BBC Iplayer here.

I’m super excited about Tiny Wonders because it’s the first time I’ve written a whole series for CBeebies – all ten episodes. I was also part of the development team – I wrote the pilot script, developed the characters and developed multiple episode ideas.

And after the show was commissioned by CBeebies, I wrote the storylines and scripts for each episode too.

Tiny Wonders was created by New Zealand based animator Daniel Short. He came up with the amazing concept and was also the lead animator throughout the project. The series was produced by independent production company Freakworks. Myself and Dan worked with Freakworks and CBeebies during the development and production of the show.

So what’s Tiny Wonders about? Here’s how’s it is described on the CBeebies programme page:

Join the Nogglins, Fidd, Nono, Itty, Yapp-Yapp and Hum, on a voyage of discovery to explore the Tiny Wonders of the natural world. Slow down, look closer. What can you see?

And here’s the trailer:

In its first week, Tiny Wonders was the most watched show on CBeebies and the most popular children’s show on BBC Iplayer. I think it’s gorgeous but it was really good to hear how many children in the UK enjoyed watching it too.

Before I tell you about writing for Tiny Wonders, I want to share some of the wonderful art and crafts children and parents have been sharing.

Tiny Wonders Art:

Some gorgeous Fimo Nogglins from Angus and Anna:

Tiny Wonders Art from Angus:

A brilliant wooden noggin, made by Mahboob Raja for his four year old boy:

And a tray of play dough nogglins from Rhona, Sarah and Craig Lamont.

These are all so lovely!! Thanks for sharing them with me.

Writing Tiny Wonders:

Here’s a bit more about the development process, from my perspective as the screenwriter for the show.

Hired:

Daniel Short pitched the initial Tiny Wonders idea to CBeebies, along with a company who wanted to make it with him, Freakworks. CBeebies liked it so much they gave Freakworks some development money and that’s the point when they hired me. I was brought on board to develop the characters and episode ideas, and to write the first episode script.

They found me on a children’s media database I’d forgotten I was even on. And we happened, by wonderful chance, to all be based in Leith in Scotland. So I went to meet Chris Marks the producer and we clicked. I’d written episodes for CBeebies before (Nina and the Neurons) and I’ve worked in-house for BBC Scotland in development – storylining episodes and developing new science series for children’s television. Freakworks had made lots of shows, but nothing for 3 to 6 years so this was a good fit.

Coming up with lots of small and wonderful ideas:

We all contributed episode ideas, until the list grew to around 30 wonders-of-the-tiny-world. We needed natural objects that had something surprising or interesting about them. We wanted a mix of urban and rural locations. Objects had to look different (and not too obvious) when you were close up and exploring them as part of a macro world.

Two of my ideas that later became episodes were geode and litchen. I’d seen an amazing fence post that had a whole host of lichens growing on it – it was really stunning. And I’ve always been fascinated by geodes – that boring looking round rocks can contain a dazzling crystal world inside them.

I wrote short paragraphs pitches for every episode next. These were important because they showed CBeebies what was Tiny (and Wonderful) about each episode and they showed the potential for a story. Here is an example:

GEODE (natural)

Inside the rock egg there’s a secret place, it’s purple and sparkling…

Location: Bottom of cliff

Developing Characters

The characters, designed by Dan, were shaped in ways that corresponded to how they moved. Fidd is an ice hockey puck shape and slides quickly about. Hum is a floaty cloud shape and glides slowly. The characters started as 2D drawings that later became 3D shapes.

I was given illustrations of the characters, names and basic descriptions for how each character moved along with their main characteristic – chatty, bossy, fast and so on.

I used the enneagram as a framework to develop the characters further, giving them more personality and depth. The enneagram is a type of personality profile that was used in ancient communities to make sure there were different types of people within a community and to show how everyone learns from (and needs) each other.

Each enneagram personality type changes under stress or aspires to be someone different at their best – so it was a perfect way to determine how each character would respond to the challenges presented in the episodes. It helped determine how they relate to each other too. It’s also pretty hipster, the enneagram. Not that I’m a hipster. I just like it.

Here’s an example of one of the character profiles, after my development:

HUM

The reflective, thoughtful, sensitive one.

Hum is distracted, drifting, musical. She is sometimes a little sad. She is in her own world, observing and taking things in from a unique perspective. Hum keeps calm in a crisis.
Sample line: It’s all round and shiny, like a tiny moon!

Group role: Younger sister. Independent bystander. Notoces things the others don’t see.
Movement: Floats along slowly
Character type: Investigator / Observer. Investigators have a need for knowledge. They are introverted, curious, analytical, and insightful

Here are all the characters with their enneagram types:

• Fidd: Type 7, The Adventurer / Enthusiast (red)

• Yapyap: Type 3, The Achiever (orange)

• Itty: Type 8, The Challenger / Asserter (purple)

• Nono: Type 6, The Questioner / Loyalist (green)

• Hum: Type 5, The investigator / Observer (blue)

It took a lot of thought to match profiles to the already assigned characteristics I’d been given. I had to include:

• the way they moved
• their already defined age relationship
• name and a basic assigned characteristic (chatty, distracted etc)

And I needed to make sure all the characters were sufficiently different to each other.

At the time I was studying counselling one day a week at college so I’d explored the enneagram personality profiling in depth and I knew, for example what the child versions of profiles were too.

Every interaction I would write between the nogglins, every observation about their world, the way in which they respond to the jeopardy and solve a problem – they are all based on characterisation so it was really important that I knew who they were

I also wanted the series to represent neurodiversity and encourage child viewers to celebrate the differences within themselves and those around them.

For example, Hum is distracted and gets lost because of it in ‘Bark’. Distractedness in Inattentive ADHD is due to noticing (and thinking about) other things. It’s about noticing too much at once and being hypersensitive to things like sound and light. So HUM gets lost when distracted but is found by using music – humming sounds. In other episodes, I was careful to make Hum the character who spots things others don’t. For example in ‘Geod’, Hum is the one who finds the crack and follows it to reveal the crystals. The others haven’t noticed it. So in writing the episodes as I did, I show both the helpful and unhelpful sides of distractedness.

Yapyap is the chatty character. But in ‘Lichen’, Yapyap needs to quieten down during a game of camouflage hide and seek. Being talkative causes Yapyap to be spotted easily when the others hear them talking excitedly. But I was really conscious that we don’t suggest that Yapyap needs to learn to be a quiet Nogglin. Yapyap will grow up to be a chatty adult Nogglin and that’s okay, they just learn in that episode that sometimes, it’s a good idea to be quiet.

When I’d finished all the character descriptions and explained the enneagram to Julia Bond, (Executive Producer at CBeebies) she said “This is amazing, it stops them being just blobs, now they’re blobs with depth and this could be what makes this show stand out as different.” What a relief to have such a positive response after all that hard work. She really understood my ambition for the series.

The Noggins are voiced by real children and I wanted them to behave like authentic children too.

A lovely part of the Tiny Wonders concept was to include real children’s reactions to each of the wonders. So when I was writing scripts I’d write the sorts of things I knew children would say. For example “It looks like a tiny volcano” when describing the barnacle. Next to some of the lines of the script I added a star. These were lines that could be swapped out and replaced with real child reactions when they were recorded at a later date.

But most of the lines were too important to be changed. They were absolutely necessary to the viewer’s understanding of the story. So the child actors read all the lines in the script I’d written but they were also showed pictures of objects and they responded in real time with their own descriptions. Some of those lines were later chosen by the producer, Chris Marks, to be included in the final episodes.

For the development script ‘Dew drop’, I wrote a long list of questions for the children, to try to prompt reactions when looking at a dew drop image, these included:

• What does it remind you of?
• What do you think is sounds like?
• What does it look like?
• What do you think it wants?

All the time I was writing the script and developing the characters there were visual changes being added too, by the animation and production team. For example, glasses and monocles were added to the Nogglins to give them more character and to make them look similar to their craft, the bee sized Noggin.

I love the Noggin – Dan’s idea for the spacecraft. It has interchangeable appendages so it can hover or float or fly, depending on where it landed. A sort of cross between steam punk and nature. Nature Punk – if that’s a thing!

After weeks of hard work from everyone, the script, character descriptions, episode ideas and pilot animation were pitched to CBeebies and we got a yes!

This was super exciting news but I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone because it was all confidential. And then we had to wait 6 months before production began too. And it was more than a year after that before it came out on TV – that’s a very long time to keep a secret!

Creating Stories

Once we’d been commissioned and production began, my next challenge was to write each episode idea into a proper story. I collected information from all our meetings until I had a long list of all the things I needed to do as the writer. Here’s the list I came up with, to make sure I was doing what was expected. Every episode needed:

• Awe and wonder at the natural world – introduce beautiful and surprising things in nature
• An authentic child-based perspective and way of seeing the world (from the nogglins)
• A initial moment to slow down and notice things, narrator introduced
• A second moment of slowing down for the Nogglin of the day (who hadn’t previously slowed down much) to use mindfulness to solve a problem, without the narrator saying to do this
• Increased jeopardy in each episode
• At least one funny part in each episode
• A problem set up and resolved, featuring that episodes nogglin of the day
• A problem caused, in part by a characteristic of one of the nogglins (e.g. being fast, being distracted)
• A problem caused in part by the Tiny Wonder environment
• A life lesson learned from the solving of the problem – if it’s one that was learnt as a result of a characteristic (e.g. being stubborn) the lesson is universal to children (for example, it’s important to listen to your friends) rather than very specific to a perceived negative characteristic in a child (for example you need to be less stubborn / chatty / distracted).
• At least two different scripted macro shots plus the landing shot
• A section where the nogglin of the day is solo and uses mindfulness to discover something. But they have to discover this by talking to themselves (no narrator or other character dialogue) or by visually showing this somehow – and then they re-join the others and share what they’ve learned.

Every episode had to be under 3 minutes long and 1 minute of that was arriving and leaving the tiny world and there was always a section of live action too. So it was a massive challenge to get so much into so few words and construct a fully resolved story. All the noggins needed to participate in each episode, they all needed to respond in ways authentic to their character and the situation and there needed to be lines that could be swapped out for real child reactions. I wanted it to always sound like real children having real conversations.

Because it was a new show, things were still being worked out as I wrote the storylines and scripts. So for example I had to write some of the episodes without the actual Tiny Wonder image. I knew what it would be (for example a barnacle) but it hadn’t been taken yet.

Other episodes had to change because of the limits of animation, or in terms of movement of characters or the Tiny Wonder itself. So there were lots of changes.

We came up with initial story ideas during a writers room day, with myself, the producer Chris and later the animator Dan too – we really needed him to check our ideas were possible in terms of the animation.

I then wrote storylines for each episodes (a plan of what happens, it’s a bit like a book synopsis) and these were sent to various people for notes in including the producer, the lead animator and to the CBeebies exec. They all sent me notes.

I made changes to the episodes in response to the notes – but sometimes I came back to explain why something needed to be a certain way for the episode to work. Then they were sent back to CBeebies for the final sign off. Once a storyline had been signed off, it came back to me and I wrote the script – the lines of dialogue and lines of action for the episode.

The scripts went through a similar process of circulation and notes in response, and I rewrote them multiple times. Once we had a template script for one episode and rules for the Tiny Wonders world, it was much easier to write the next episodes but sometimes we’d need to change something in one episode that would affect all of the episodes.

We kept all the characters genderless. That was challenging from a writing perspective – to never use ‘he’ or ‘she’ in any dialogue, but always make all the dialogue sound like four year olds talking naturally to each other.

As changes happened I worked super hard to maintain the authenticity of each character – so if a change was needed visually, I’d make sure the character responded in a new way that was authentic to them. With so few lines, any small change – even to a single line – would change the whole script. I needed to make sure each character got an equal amount of lines and lines in keeping with their character. I also had to think about the lines for the narrator – if they’re speaking to the Noggins or to the viewer because this changes the ways things are said. 

I have lots of experience working with four and five year olds, doing workshops and storytelling. I often show them a giant pinecone and without fail, every time I get it out, wherever I am, children react in the same way. The reaction is always a big amazed noise that turns into a collective wow. Here’s a photo of that moment in an outdoor classroom:

I included the collective ‘wow’ as an authentic shared expression in my scripts – a bit like a family having a catchphrase or in-joke.

At times I had lines suggested to me as quick fixes to solve a visual problem but more often then not, they didn’t work because they were explaining something from the viewers’ perspective, looking in or looking down on the tiny world. The Noggins are in the Tiny World looking outwards – they can’t see what what the viewers’ can. That was yet another thing to consider and I wanted to keep it consistant.

Writers need to take notes they are given on board and make requested changes. But I said when I believed something was really important and when I believed a suggested changed could damage the integrity of the show. Ultimately – there were lots of compromises but I am hugely proud of the end result.

Conclusion

Well that’s me shared a little bit about my role as a writer for Tiny Wonders. There were so many people involved that I haven’t mentioned. People at Freakworks who did things like taking beautiful photos of the tiny worlds, filming on location, animators, the voiceover actors (a big shout out to the children -they were so good) and so many more besides them. We’re all really proud of what we achieved together. If you haven’t seen it already, I really hope you enjoy it.

 

Stream My Story

Libraries across Scotland worked together to commission children’s authors for an online book festival called ‘Stream My Story’. The book festival went live at the end of term and schools watched events in class, as an end of term treat.

The author videos stayed online over the holidays. Now there’s just a few days left to watch the festival before the videos are taken down so I wanted to share this video with you.

I was asked to do an event around 20 minuets and I’m proud to say I did it in all one take. It’s filmed it in a hazel grove on the Isle of Skye. It seemed like a good place to film, since the story, Crime Squirrel Investigators, is all about hazelnuts! It’s also where I live (Skye, not a hazel grove).

Thanks to my friend Joyce for tech support and for coming along with me too. I’m glad I wasn’t dancing about in front of a camera, by a loch, in a hazel grove, all by myself!

You can see all the brilliant stream my story book festival events here for a few more days. Hope you enjoy them!

 

Virtual Summer School

I’m excited to be part of the programme of authors, illustrators and special guests at the Virtual Summer School, hosted by Edinburgh Zoo and The Highland Wildlife Park. Here’s the trailer, see if you can spot me!

It looks amazing, it’s on for the next four weeks and starts Monday. There’s behind the scenes talks, crafts, family challenges and lots of animals. My nephew can’t wait to go – he loves penguins.

Book tickets here.

 

Science Skills

My nephew (9) had to draw a scientist and label their skills for school. My sister sent me this picture and explained he’d chosen to draw me. Wow! I love it. I especially love that I have the skill ‘fearless’ along with the complimentary skill ‘good at being safe’.

It reminded me of a book I came across recently when I was preparing for an online school event. I wanted to see what authors were doing online to get some tips, so I watched this Scottish Book Trust video:

What started as research into technique quickly changed into me being fascinated by ‘The Incredible and Fantastically Feminist Life of Ada Lovelace’, and by Mrs Puff, her best friend the cat. The whole video is so engaging, as is the illustrated book. As Ada grew up it made me think of Rachel McCrum’s fantastic performance playing Ada when we toured with the Lady Scientist Stitch and Bitch.

I am not my father’s daughter

That’s the line that always sticks in my head, about her relationship with her father the poet, Lord Byron.

Ada’s life is fascinating, as is her design for the first computer – the difference engine. If you want to know more, buy Anna’s book from your local independent bookstore.

I looked up the rest of Anna Doherty’s work – I was so impressed – she’s an author illustrator who writes about women scientists and women who are neurodiverse (both topics are close to my heart).

She even wrote an illustrated book about Michelle Obama. And then I discovered her first book was about the Bronte sisters. Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books. I felt inspired seeing Anna’s work and Anna, after watching the video.

And in a small way, I felt proud my nephew chose a woman scientist for his school project – and that woman was me.

 

Storytelling in Lockdown

It’s been over 3 months since lockdown began and just like other authors, I’ve had my live events and book festivals cancelled due to covid 19. We’ve had to learn new ways to share stories. Here’s a bit about how I’ve been doing that and some story videos for the children you know.

Live in Schools

Last week I did a live Crime Squirrel Investigators event on google meet with two remote primary schools, Badcaul and Scoraig near Ullapool. One is only accessible by boat and in total, there are 16 children in both schools.

The event was lovely – we planned how to take what I normally do live and make it work on a computer screen while keeping it interactive. The teacher Mrs Love, was really helpful and we did a test earlier in the week so I worked out how to share images, music and video while still being live on screen myself. I was a bit nervous about the technology but it all worked.

For example instead of getting volunteers to help me with a camoflage demonstration, I prerecorded myself dressing up instead of the children:

Instead of getting a teacher to help with actions while I’m singing a song, I taught the children the song on guitar live and then played a prerecorded audio version while I mimed along and did live actions. I hadn’t realised quite how exhausting jumping about like a squirrel all the way through a song is and I had to do it for two songs!!

We got families to type answers in to quiz questions on the chat function and at other points the children made true or false shapes with their bodies for a squirrel quiz. At the end of the event, the children asked questions live on video. I really enjoyed it and I was pleased that they did too. Thanks to the Scottish Booktrust for funding this event.

I’ve even purchased a go-pro camera since then, so I can make better films and have a much better webcam for future events. I’m excited about using it for underwater filming and outdoor adventures too – it’s waterproof!

Live on Facebook with RSPB Scotland

Earlier on in lockdown, RSPB Scotland asked if I could make a video to engage with their younger members. We went for a Can’t-Dance-Cameron interactive storytelling session (with dancing and a science experiment) as part of their Big Wild Sleepout event. It was broadcast on Facebook and they added it to YouTube too so you can watch it here:

I could have filmed more outside but I wanted children who couldn’t go out much to feel understood and I wanted to remind them, with our imaginations and using stories – we can go anywhere. The sent me an osmo pocket camera so I learned how to use that and filmed it all myself. It took ages so I vowed to simplify things a lot for the next video. Thankfully the RSPB helped with editing! And thanks to the Scottish Booktrust for funding this event!

The Little Oak Tree

What came next was a request to record a story for the children at Ps and Gs. I chose a simple story I wrote about a little oak tree. It’s got a couple of songs in it too. It’s main aim is to encourage the children to be themselves. The story comes first and then there’s some songs and rhymes from Rachel. I hope you enjoy it, the message is for adults too – be yourself! Watch it here:

Leaf Cafe Live on Facebook

I had a nice surprise when I heard Carol at Leaf Cafe in Hartfordshire was reading Crime Squirrel Investigators: The Naughty Nut Thief live on facebook as part of her legendary 11am daily book reading. You can watch it on facebook here. It’s had over 1500 views because Carol is great at reading stories!

Lockdown

It’s been a strange time. A hard time.

At first I was surviving, waiting to get through it and come out the other side. Now I’ve got to a place where I’ve realised I don’t have very much control over planning the future so I’ve surrendered to that. And as a result, I’m more able to get on with what I’ve got to do right now and I’m less bothered when things I thought were going to happen don’t or can’t. I sometimes have hard days but overall, I’m feeling much better. I’ve been running lots which I think helps. I hope you’re doing okay, whatever is happening for you and I hope these stories help.

I’m writing most days and I’ve had deadlines every week for the last 10 weeks so I’ve had to get on with it. I realised I’m more resourceful than I thought I was because I’ve made my deadlines, even though I was finding it really hard at first. I suppose that’s what we’re all doing, we’re doing our best to keep going and do what we need to do, whatever that looks like for us.

Learn Gaelic

I’ve heard lots more people are learning Gaelic since lockdown began so I’ll finish up by sharing a Gaelic glossary I made for Historic Environment Scotland when I was working as a facilitator out on the Ilse of Lewis. I didn’t share it here at the time I made it, so now’s a good time. It’s an easy introduction to a new language. And it’s full of children’s artwork so it’s really lovely. Why not give Gaelic a go and watch it here:

Read more about the Blackhouse project on the Isle of Lewis here.

I hope you have a fantastic summer holiday and I’ll blog again soon. Sorry it’s been so long!

 

Before the Light Came

Sometime in 2014 I was invited to respond to a short section of archive film with creative writing. The request came from Filmpoem artist Alastair Cook. I’d responded once before to a 20 second Filmpoem (20 poets – 20s of film each) back in 2012 and really enjoyed the challenge. I also worked with Alastair and children at North Lights Arts Festival to help the children create their own film poem, Shaking Shells.

This time I was one of several poets who responded, we each got given a section of silent film and none of us saw each other’s footage. The short film has now been published with Rachel McCrum‘s beautiful voice narrating the piece.

At the time when the request came, I’d been listening to a series of podcasts about the illusive nature of happiness, if you try to chase after it or hold onto it – it slips through your fingers. I work with children lots and they laugh loads more than we do. I was thinking about how they seem to be better at happiness. They create things, like a lovely piece of art, and then they give it away. It goes something like this:

I love this star. I made this star. YAY it’s finished! I want you to have it! See you later…

And then they’re off, doing something else. I studied physics so I often think about science when I’m writing too. In my piece of film there were people fishing – it looked like they were trying to catch light. I thought about the nature of light and it being like happiness and I thought about the things we try to do to prepare for happiness – when I get this job or this house or this relationship… I’ll be happy. But actually that doesn’t work.

So my poem is about chasing after happiness – trying to contain it and keep it. And how children just give it away and we need to be more like them if we want to be happy. With light as the metaphor – because it’s a wave (travelling through) and a particle. And we’re all made from stars:

Before the light came, we travelled in straight lines, with sunglasses in our bags.
Later, when it arrived we tried to catch it in our hands. Our jam jars labeled ‘photons’.

She was only three, but she knew how to share. Almost as soon as she held it, she gave it away. Without fear. Without loss.

She stayed bright, while the rest of us turned to shadows.

You can see my section as part of the beautiful Filmpoem Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared):

Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared) from Alastair Cook on Vimeo.

It was amazing to see how well the individually written pieces worked together as a whole. Here’s how Alastair describes the complete piece on his website:

Watch Alastair Cook’s brand new film, three years in the making, with new writing by twenty of the world’s best poets, sountracked by composer Luca Nasciutia and read by poet Rachel McCrum – screens worldwide from Autumn 2016. New ekphrasis work by poets John Glenday, Vicki Feaver, Stevie Ronnie, Janie McKie, Brian Johnstone, Jo Bell, Andrew Philip, Linda France, Dave Bonta, Angela Readman, Michael Vandebril, Gerard Rudolf, George Szirtes, Emily Dodd, Ian Duhig, Rachel McCrum, Robert Peake, Polly Rowena Atkin, Pippa Little and Vona Groarke.

All images and films are copyright Alastair Cook 2016 unless expressly indicated otherwise.

My next book is a science book for children and by coincidence, it’s about Light!

 

Mining Memories with Primary Two

What would it be like to be a canary called CoCo working down the Kinneil Pit? Or a pit cat? Or a pit pony? Or an 11-year-old boy on his first day down the mine? Five and six-year olds from Bo’ness Primary School imagined they were the animals and children down the mine. They wrote these amazing stories:

I’ve been working with the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative to create digital stories about mining with primary school children. I’m writing a series of blogs to share their mining memories. This first post is stories by Primary Two at Bo’ness Public Primary School. I’ll tell you a bit more about the project:

Digital Stories

Digital stories are short audio sound tracks (less than 3 minuets) with still images over the top. They’re personal stories in the story makers own voice. I previously worked on three digital story projects with Britain from Above, The Govan Reminiscence Group and with Historic Scotland’s Trinity House. You can read about that project here.

This was unusual because it was creating digital stories but imagining the perspective instead of it being a storymaker telling their true story. It was also working with primary two children (age five and six) instead of adults. And we imagined we were animals!

Primary Two

The project started with storytelling workshops in class – we chatted about what makes a good story and using our imagination and memories to come up with lots of ideas. I told them an animal story and set them a brief to create their own short stories from the perspective of a pit animal. At first the pit ponies were wearing sparkley tutus and loved dancing but we talked about how great their use of imagination was and what a good idea it was to think about things like clothes and feelings – what would a pit pony wear to go down the pit? How might they feel going down the mine? They got back to work and learned one of the most important lessons about writing – it’s all about rewriting!

The class went on a visit to the National Mining Museum Scotland and had a talk about the roles of animals and children in the Mine from the Maria Ford, Chairperson of the Friends of Kinneil Trust.

They had budgies in the classroom so we talked about how the budgies might feel and what it would be like to be a canary. Then the children worked with their class teacher Mrs McNab to create beautiful books:

And amazing canaries in cages:

And 3D pit ponies with coal carts: 

And fields for the pit ponies to play in:

I’d popped back in to see how they were getting on half way through the project and was amazed by their new and improved stories and all the beautiful artwork.I came back again at the end of the project to photograph their artwork and to record the children reading their stories.

After that I edited the audio soundtrack and images together to create the YouTube stories shared above. We screened them along with stories from other classes at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness. It was so good to see the children’s amazing stories being celebrated in style on the big screen in a cinema!

This post is part of a series sharing the work from the Mining Memories Project. The next post in this series will be sharing primary five and primary six digital stories about the miners strike from the perspective of pick axes, bits of coal and even Margaret Thatcher!

 

World Book Day 2015

Happy World Book Day! All over the world children went to school dressed as their favourite book characters and people celebrated reading through events!

I spent the morning at Danderhall Library in Midlothian. We got everything set up ready for the children to arrive for a Can’t-Dance-Cameron event:

After dancing, science experiments, smells, football pine cones and a story with the children, we had a chance to drink tea and eat this lovely cake:

They asked me what my favourite cake was and baked it especially for the visit! What a welcome and thank you Rachel, it was delicious! Speaking of cake, the library made this cake out of books to celebrate their birthday:

They also made some wonderful jellyfish out of plastic bottles and bubbewrap:

Wee Write and the BBC

Earlier this week I was at the lovely Aye Write‘s Wee Write festival in Glasgow.

Time for science, dancing, Scottish wildlife and stories with @auntyemily! #WeeWrite @AyeWrite pic.twitter.com/tdMBZo7QBr

— Kelpies (@DiscoverKelpies) March 1, 2016

Again they were so welcoming and friendly. After the events I was interviewed by BBC learning. They asked what my favourite book was when I was a child. The video was published today, in time for World Book Day, you can find it online here.

#WorldBookDay What’s author Emily Dodd’s favourite book? It sounds like a LOT of fun! @auntyemily #bookreviewlabhttps://t.co/YCieqXO50R

— BBCScotland Learning (@BBCScotLearn) March 3, 2016

What was your favourite book when you were a child?

 

Writing Science Shows with Young People

I’ve been working with secondary pupils to help them to write and perform science shows in a project called Museums2Go. The pupils were based in Apex inclusion units in Braeview Academy Dundee and Dunfermline High School. I was working for the National Museums Scotland and in partnership with Science Made Simple.

The National Museums Scotland have just published a new video with some highlights from the project:

Museum2Go2 from National Museums Scotland on Vimeo.

The Project

The pupils trained to become science communicators, they chose the science demonstrations from a menu (put together by Science Made Simple and based on the themes of the new galleries) and finally they wrote their own scripts. They also practiced and performed their science shows at the National Museum of Scotland.

I worked directly with groups of pupils through several school visits and day visits to the museum. My role was to facilitate the choosing of demonstrations, writing the scripts and practicing / performance too.

Challenges

I think the main challenge for the pupils was one of confidence – these pupils had to leave mainstream education for various reasons. I kept telling them that they could achieve something brilliant if they put the work in.

Rewards

The pupils worked hard to write and practice their shows. They came up with brilliant ideas for the stories to link the show together, they had ownership over their shows. There were a few fall outs but that’s all part of working in a creative team and relying on each of the team members to do their bit. They presented to and entertained a live audience in the National Museum of Scotland with a show that they had written – that’s a huge achievement!

I enjoyed getting to know the pupils throughout the project and seeing them improve in confidence and build ideas as a team together. I also loved working with the National Museums Scotland and Science Made Simple.

Pilot

I was part of a pilot for this project where we trained Holyrood High school pupils to become science presenters. They didn’t write their shows but they did do an awesome job of presenting Alex’s Amazing Adventure at the museum. I wrote about my experience of the working with the pupils here. There’s a lovely video on this stage of the project too:

Stanley Mills

The exciting thing is I’m now about to run science communication workshops for a new age group – this time it’s with primary school pupils at Stanley Mills in Perthshire. I’m excited about sharing science communication skills and tips with younger ones – some as young as age five. I’ve been planning fun ways to get basics across and also to make them laugh by doing things well and then doing things wrong (obviously safely – I mean like talking really fast or folding my arms and looking grumpy) and getting them to tell me how to improve. I’ve planned some fun games to cover the basics of presenting and they’ll all get a chance to do some science presenting too. I’ll be running workshops at Historic Scotland’s Stanley Mills tomorrow and Thursday.

The Museum2Go project is funded by the Robertson Trust. Read more about Museums2Go on the National Museums Scotland website here.

 

Maritime Memories of Leith and Newhaven

I’ve been working with older people in Leith and Historic Scotland’s maritime museum Trinity House to create digital stories. A digital story is a two to three minute audio sound track with still images over the top. It’s a personal story in the story maker’s own voice. These stories were inspired by the collections at Trinity House.

This week we had our red carpet premiere at the beautiful old cinema building of Destiny Church Leith. It’s one of the three remaining plaster cinema screens in the UK.

We even rolled out a red carpet and over 70 people attended!

Having a fab time at red carpet launch of Memories of Maritime Leith. @auntyemily #livingmemories #digitalstories pic.twitter.com/A7au1rtrIS

— M Louise Kelly (@mllouisekelly) March 4, 2015

I introduced the digital stories at the event and thought that would be a good way to introduce you to the films now:

A Bow-Tow Remembers: Sophia Abrahamsen

Sophia is a Bow-Tow, that’s a person from Newhaven. She’s passionate about Newhaven History. On week two of the workshops Sophia read her first draft – it was so beautiful it was met by a spontaneous applause.  Who is Old Sherrag? Who lives in New Lane and why was Sophia abandoned as a child in Newhaven Harbour?

 

Watch the video on Youtube here.

From Lerwick to Leith: Stephen Hall

Stephen loved to talk about this family and that’s what this story is about. It’s also the first thing Stephen has written since school – I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s wonderful:

Watch the video on Youtube here.

Leith Docks: Ramsay Tubb

Ramsay began this story in school when he and two friends researched Leith Docks. Just what was it about the docks that captured his imagination?

Watch the video on Youtube here

All at Sea: Andrew Grant

Andrew is an amazing local historian. As well as bringing his local knowledge, Andrew helped digitise many of the images you see in these stories. Andrew had so many stories that his first read through was eight minutes instead of three. He had the challenge to shorten this and he chose one story – the story of his maritime training:

Watch the video on Youtube here.

How did the project begin?

I worked on a similar project facilitating digital story workshops with the Govan Reminiscence Group and Britain from Above. I’ll blog about that soon! I got chatting with Lucy at Trinity House and suggested digital stories would be a great way to engage people on their collections as well as capturing and sharing local history.

What did the project involve?

Firstly we ran a drop in recruitment session at the Living Memory Association venue in Leith’s Ocean Terminal.

We’re in @Ocean_Terminal @LivingMemoryA 2- 4pm. Come & find out more about Maritime Memories #Leith! @welovehistory pic.twitter.com/wbv4UGWZkd — Emily Dodd (@auntyemily) October 28, 2014

We told people more about the project, shared some memories as a group and gave people a chance to sign up.

Amazing session hearing maritime memories from #Leith folk. So many stories to share @LivingMemoryA @welovehistory pic.twitter.com/jEynAe48nA

— Emily Dodd (@auntyemily) October 28, 2014

Each participant came to six two hour workshops with homework in between too. We drank tea, ate cake and worked on the stories.

MT @auntyemily: Brilliant first maritime memories #Leith workshop @LivingMemoryA w/ HS. So many wonderful stories! pic.twitter.com/vKDWqOxmpy

— Historic Scotland (@welovehistory) December 3, 2014

The group gave feedback on each story – polishing a tweaking them and choosing the right images:

Suave! MT @auntyemily: Maritime Memories workshop today. Stephen’s Dad in the silky-shirted #Edinburgh Harmonica Band pic.twitter.com/b37juS3tHC — Historic Scotland (@welovehistory) December 10, 2014

Lucy Bull provided the expertise on Trinity House and their collections and I ran the storytelling exercises. It was amazing to see the participant’s stories grow and improve over the weeks and it was wonderful to get such a brilliant reaction to them at the premiere.

UPDATE:

I’m looking forward to seeing this in the Edinburgh Evening News any day now. You can read about this project on STV here.