On Friday, January 27th Edinburgh College and the City of Edinburgh Council organized a multiplier event to present the Story Valley project. It was organized to demonstrate the project to teaching professionals that will also benefit from it. The event was at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh which is a beautiful old venue.
There were students, educators, policy makers and local partners, the Scottish Poetry Society and the Scottish Storytelling Center. First, they showed videos and explained the whole Story Valley concept. After that, there were live performances. One of the radio and podcasting students interviewed one of their lecturers and three of the students who have been through a Story Valley pilot about their experiences. The students did a songwriting pilot so they wrote songs as part of their Story Valley project. At the multiplier event, they performed those songs on stage. Annette Chapman, their lecturer for that project also performed a song that she had written in Scots. Besides that, she spoke about taking on the Story Valley project and how beneficial it was.
The event was mainly let by students. They were involved in the songwriting process, they performed those songs, they did the interviews and the event was filmed and recorded by students from the media department. The organizers of the event partnered with the festival Burns & Beyond which is a yearly festival in Edinburgh. It is a whole weekend of live music and spoken word performances. Because of that partnership, a special guest, the singer-songwriter Josie Duncan did a short set of her songs at the end of the event.
Photos taken by Nick Millson & Jack Wedlock