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Storytelling techniques for teachers in adult education

July 10, 2022 Sunday,09:00    -    July 15, 2022 Friday,15:00
Kasteelstraat 6, 3740 Bilzen Get Directions

Storytelling in Adult Education is a course about how to use oral storytelling and storytelling techniques in formal and non-formal adult learning. The course will be hosted and run in the beautiful Storytelling Castle Alden Biesen in Belgium, the home of the biggest international storytelling festival in Europe. It offers five days of presentations, workshops & performances.

Storytelling and narrative teaching approaches are known to help improve verbal and communication skills in the mother tongue and/or in a foreign language. It also impacts imagination, creativity, social and civic competences, values, intercultural understanding, cultural awareness and expression.

But specifically for adult education, introducing storytelling techniques offers a set of tools for inclusion. Storytelling offers bottom-up narrative art, it creates a community of co-creation, it facilitates to hear and to be heard, it lowers the threshold to art, it stimulates a constructivist meaning making process, it helps create metaphors to by-pass the unspeakable… Stories are heritage, they are gateways to heritage and to other cultures.

It helps

  • to strengthen a sense of identity and community,
  • to raise adults’ motivation for learning
  • to improve social and cultural participation of migrants, newcomers, refugees, socially deprived groups
  • to stimulate the intercultural dialogue
  • as a vehicle for the inter-generational dialogue

The first part of the course pays attention to the telling of stories, tackling elements such as to tell in narrative structures, to use appropriate language, to add description, dialogue, contrast, repetition; switch to different times, places,                   characters;      play                  with                        rhythm,                 silence,      humour,     tension             … The second part offers a methodological approach for using storytelling in adult learning. Here the focus is on techniques to connect people, empower people, revive memories, develop language, translate science, unlock heritage….

The main trainer at the course will be a professional storyteller, Giovanna Conforto. Guest speakers will add specific topics to the programme.

THIS COURSE IS ELIGIBLE FOR ERASMUS+ KA1-FUNDING.