A Day in the Life of a Storyteller
11 Jun 2021
A Day in the Life of a Storyteller
Hi there,
I’m Russ and I’m a proud descendant of the Ngarrindjeri people.
I wanted to share a quick window into my life at Story Factory as we’re asking for your support to hire a fellow Storyteller!
I’m actually a graduate of NIDA and have been performing stories for the last 20 years. I’ve also got a Masters in Teaching from UWS. After a few years at NIDA as the National Program Manager for children and youth, I joined Story Factory.
My day usually starts with a car trip. Story Factory is lucky to have great relationships with a whole range of schools and their teachers spread throughout Western Sydney from Mt Druitt to Campbelltown, however it does mean lots of travel!
After meeting our volunteer writing tutors at the front desk, we find our classroom. This set of workshops we’ve been working on Dino-scussions with a year 3 class where they create their very own dinosaur and write a series of short stories from their dinosaur’s perspective.
If I had to choose my favourite part, it would be in the last week when we present the young writers with their typed and bound writing.
After an initial shyness to get up to share, once the first student shares their story it’s hard to hold them back! Each writer gets a copy of the collected class’s work, which we know gives our young people’s parents and guardians something to be super proud of. In this workshop series I had one particular student who from week to week didn’t want to share their work with the class. I am so happy to say by the final class both her and I read a few of her stories and did a little performance reading of a short conversation her dinosaur had with another.
And just like that the hour is over. After a quick debrief with our vollies, it’s on to the next school to share another set of writing with an excited class of young writers.
I hope this has given you a better idea of what you’d be helping us with. Having another Storytelling colleague would be awesome for all those extra young people that we’d be able to work with so thank you!