Storytelling workshops – Romii de stepă

Starting from the motto of the American writer Robin Moore, this course is addressed to children and young people of Roma ethnicity, with the aim of demonstrating that regardless of the environment they come from, any child can be valuable through their talent and once polished, it can become a symbol of creativity and originality.

The storytelling workshops start from the basic idea, namely the story, thus engaging the target group in the process of non-formal education, diminishing stereotypes and implicitly in the consolidation of cultural identity.

What is storytelling?

The term storytelling is made up of two words in English: story and telling. Literally, the term can be translated into Romanian by expressions like: telling a story, narrative communication or even creative communication.

In essence, storytelling is a communication technique that consists in telling a story that will attract the attention of a specific audience, with the aim of transmitting to that audience a message capable of stimulating a specific desire in readers or viewers, convincing them to fulfill a precise action.

In short: it’s about convincing by telling a story.

The art of storytelling or the techniques that help create feelings, sensations or emotions through the act of speaking or writing.

In a storytelling workshop, the main steps will be followed to identify the potential of the target group and then capitalize on everyone’s talent through activities in the form of games and improvisation exercises, aimed at developing their imagination and language.

Over the course of 10 months, 20 storytelling workshops of 2 hours each will be organized, which will bring together a number of 20 young people/students of Roma ethnicity, the workshop having as its motto – “In each of us lives a born storyteller, who is waiting to be set free” (Robin Moore).

The storytelling workshops propose an innovative method of non-formal education whose main purpose is to reduce stereotypes and prejudices related to the Roma ethnicity; They will contribute to strengthening the cultural identity of the young participants, meeting the need for play as a cultural experience of children and young people.

The workshops will aim to include a series of interactive activities in the form of games and creativity and improvisation exercises that will develop the language and cultivate the imagination of the 20 Roma youth/students who will be involved in this sub-activity.

Starting from various resources, such as the childhood stories they will read together during the workshops, photographs, cartoons, etc., each participant will have the opportunity to tell stories from personal experience, create riddles, compose their own stories and/or poems starting from certain words or images, make a series of unrelated drawings, then build a story that goes through all the drawings made, etc..

In addition, 10 conferences on the topic of storytelling will be presented, appropriate to the age of the participants, within the 20 workshops (1 conference per month lasting 1 hour supported by 1 cultural animator/teacher, held in the first storytelling workshop of that month).