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Sharing Stories
Paul Bristow • May 18, 2020
Community and folklore
For the last year, we have 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.
MTC Project Blog
Earlier this month, we were asked to produce some artwork for the Afrowegian Project , imagining an Afro-Futurist version of the story of real world cycling superhero, Marshall 'Major' Taylor. The comic display panels form part of an exhibition by the riverside in Glasgow throughout October. You can read more about the work of the project and how to get involved. We're looking forward to doing some more collaborative work with Afrowegian's Jim Muotone, down in Inverclyde over the next few months.
Earlier this year, our director Paul Bristow spoke to Tall Tale films as part of CVS Inverclyde's Digital Open Studios project. Check out the short video below to hear Paul chat about storytelling, communities and his creative process for his own writing and his work with Magic Torch Comics CIC. You can also see his fairly messy home office under the stairs...
Back in 2019, artist Mhairi Robertson and myself, spent some time with a group of women in Glasgow, who told us about their experience of the asylum process, and the welcome they had found in Scotland. The project was pit together by the Poverty Truth Community, and the women all wanted to focus on the positive things that had happened to them since arriving, and the actions that other could take while in the process. A booklet of their stories, which also shares information on the support which is available for people, was launched during Refugee Week 2021 at an online event. The book can be downloaded for free on our website or read on our ISSUU page . A narrated version of the book, recorded by one of the women is also available to view and there is a short preview below.
Magic Torch Comics CIC are asking local young people to get involved in creating a science fiction adventure comic online. The comic, Starbound, is part of our ‘Outside The Box’ project, supported by National Lottery Community Fund. Over the last year, the project has delivered online workshops and involved young people in creating comics about life in lockdown and a collection of spooky stories for Galoshans. For this project, we wanted to do something a little different. It’s a choose your own adventure comic, where local people help create and shape the story on instagram. Every Monday evening, a short video will introduce the story so far and offer people choices for what happens next. People have 24 hours to vote, the artist creates the page and the next week we choose again, spinning the story off in unexpected directions each time. Right now, it’s still impossible to deliver face to face workshops, but if you’ve been online learning all day, you maybe don’t want to come to another online workshop in the evening. So we wanted to provide an opportunity that was easy for everyone to engage in, whatever way they want. Some people might just vote or comment on the story, or email in ideas, other people might want to get more involved and share their creations which we’ll then put out on the blog or in the weekly workshop videos. Although the focus of the project is comic storytelling, we want people to get involved in other creative ways. We’ll have story prompts and tips in the weekly workshop videos, there’s a whole world to explore, so we hope people will get inspired to create and share all sorts of work – Minecraft builds, music, moments of drama – whatever you like. Part of the reason we decided on science fiction was to open up possibilities to imagine. The last few months have been really confined, and it’s easy for your imagination to become confined too, so we wanted to help people break out of that a bit. Starbound launched on Monday 8th March on instagram , there's a new story vote every week. People can get involved on Magic Torch Comics Instagram page or by submitting ideas and suggestions directly on the project page .
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Magic Torch Comics CIC
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07757 112 332info@magictorchcomics.co.uk27 East StreetGreenockPA15 2RL
info@magictorchcomics.co.uk
27 East Street
Greenock
PA15 2RL