Culture Café Tells Stories

Culture Café Tells Stories is a working partnership with Derbyshire Virtual School and Learning Through Arts. We’re really pleased to have received funding for the project from The National Lottery Community Fund.

This pilot stage creative project worked with storyteller, Sef Townsend, and Derbyshire’s unaccompanied asylum seeking young people aged 16+. The project was also supported by Debi Hedderwick and Learning Through Arts’ Culture Café – a monthly social and arts event for refugees and asylum seekers and their foster carers.

Culture Café Tells Stories brought young people together at Nottingham Playhouse with their peers to share common experiences, in a safe, fun and creative environment. Sef Townsend is a specialist in telling and creating stories using multiple languages and working with refugees and asylum seekers. A range of languages was used alongside English, with support from an ‘English for Speakers of Other Languages’ tutor.

The young people that took part in this community storytelling project were supported to develop skills and self-confidence, to build relationships with cultural organisations and feel the support of their new home communities. We met them in informal sessions sharing food, games, socialising and of course listening to and telling stories!

Alongside Sef, we supported regional storyteller Aoife O'Connor to work on the project, doubling up with her role as an Engagement Producer, increasing the potential for more of this work in the future.