Last week (19 Feb 2023), during the Fries Museums’ education night, Story Valley Academy was able to share the first outputs of the project and harvest valuable input. During this event “education night”, the Fries Museum invited teachers from schools and universities in the North of the Netherlands to come in and learn about how schools can work together with the museum. As Story Valley Academy worked with the Fries Museum over the last two years of Story Valley Academy (see below, Connecting Stories – Connecting People), this was a very good opportunity to share Story Valley’s experience and teaching materials while at the same time harvesting input to improve the materials.
During the Multiplier Event, which basically means “an event where you present your project to teaching professionals that will also benefit from it”, we gave a short presentation about the project: what is it about, which partners are involved and how can Story Valley Academy benefit them and other teachers across Europe? After this, we had valuable conversations with the teachers present in the room: how could they use the materials, what kind of support do they need, were there any similar projects that we could learn from, how could we improve the project?
It turns out that the Story Valley Academy way of working “creatively integrating literacy and heritage through Story Telling”, could be a concept that is applicable to many occasions and goals in education. Sure, it works to teach literacy, and is also teaching students about their heritage and the cultural heritage of their peers. However, this way of working also proves to be an excellent way to get groups of students to bond. Sharing of stories, listening to stories of peers and working together intensively for a short period of time really proves to foster relations and trust.
We learned from the other teachers in the room (from vocational schools and from higher education) that this is a valuable aspect for them, too.
After the presentation there was an opportunity to have some chats in the lobby, during an informal ‘market’, where people could ask questions and dive a little deeper into the projects.
Thank you Fries Museum, for this great opportunity and for working together with us on this!