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HTML Brief - I Am A Storyteller 2025

Storyteller Brief: I Am A Storyteller

What is I Am A Storyteller? 

I Am A Storyteller is the third phase of our four-year I Am A Creator cultural programme.  I Am A Creator is funded by investment from Arts Council England (ACE), through our status as an ACE National Portfolio Organisation (NPO). 

This programme will see us working with family audiences and targeted groups in Bassetlaw, Ashfield, Mansfield and Newark & Sherwood, in libraries and community settings. 

Our target groups are: 

  • People affected by dementia  
  • Older people  
  • SEND schools 
  • Neurodivergent families 
  • Wider public audiences, including audiences that can be/feel excluded from the arts 

 What we want:  

We are looking for five creatively curious storytellers to: 

  • Develop their practice by attending paid Continuing Professional Development (CPD)  
  • Work collaboratively with Inspire, our partners, and other storytellers on the project 
  • Engage creatively with our target audiences to ignite imaginations and create a county of storytellers   

We are open to creative approaches to storytelling. Whether that’s oral, visual, digital or something else entirely. We are looking for storytellers in the widest sense of the word and across a range of disciplines.  This could be writers, performers, or other creatives who tell stories through their work. If storytelling is at the heart of your creative practice, we want to hear from you. 

Our storytellers will: 

  • Work collaboratively with Inspire.  
  • Attend 2 days of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) 
  • Take wide inspiration from the CPD to design a workshop linked to your professional practice suitable for targeted groups to be delivered in community and library settings. 
  • Deliver the targeted workshops to either a community group, organisation or SEND school. 
5 workshops with targeted group, including an introductory ‘meet the group’ session 
Workshop duration likely to be approximately 2 hours  
  • Create content and or product from the resulting workshops for exhibition, publication and podcast. 
  • Take wide inspiration from the CPD and targeted workshops to design a public workshop linked to your professional practice suitable for mixed audiences in libraries. 
  • Deliver the workshops in libraries across Nottinghamshire. 

Approximately 4 days delivery. 

  • Travel around Nottinghamshire between venues with materials/equipment needed. 

Inspire will: 

  • Work collaboratively with and support the creative development of the storytellers. 
  • Contact the targeted groups, community organisations and SEND schools. 
  • Curate the library exhibitions. 
  • Programme the public workshops in libraries. 
  • Manage the bookings for the public workshops. 
  • Support storytellers to deliver the project. 
  • Promote through central comms team. 
  • Record the project through photography, film and an evaluation process. 
  • Design, develop and record the creative outcomes through exhibition, publication and podcast. 

Timeline: 

  • CPD and planning opportunities will take place during April and May 2025  

Supporting the arts to be accessible and inclusive CPD on Thursday 24th April 2025 

  • This will be followed by workshops with targeted groups in community settings and public workshops in libraries across Nottinghamshire  
  • This project will complete by March 2026 

Fee: 

We anticipate that there will be 9 delivery days and 2 CPD days. Public library workshops will be shared between the selected storytellers.  

We expect the total fee to be a minimum £3000 per person (our workshop fee is £250).  

The total fee and breakdown will be negotiated once the final delivery method and approach is agreed. Additional budget for workshop preparation, travel, materials, commission, access costs and to ensure quality outcome for the exhibition is available.  

NB. There will not be additional budget for accommodation. 

Application process: 

Submissions should be made by 9am on Monday 10 March to culture@inspireculture.org.uk 

What we need from you: 

  1. Your creative response.  

Below are some prompts to help you think about what you might tell/show us: 

  • How will you engage the audience?  
  • What could you do? 
  • How will you deliver it? 
  • What will you need? 
  • What could it produce?
    2. Your credentials in the form of past work.  

We want to work with new and/or established storytellers but would like to see some examples of your work that will help us know more about your practice. This might be:  

  • Weblinks 
  • Photos 
  • Social Media account links 
  • Book titles 
  • Podcasts 
  • Something else…? 

We will accept any form of application: 

  • Written (Max one side of A4) 
  • Audio (Max 2 mins) 
  • Drawn (Max A2) 
  • Filmed (Max 2 mins) 
  • Something else…? 

And finally: 

We are committed to attracting and recruiting diverse candidates and welcome applications from underrepresented groups. 

If you require Inspire to make any reasonable adjustments to the process of receiving your ideas and make it more accessible for you, please contact: culture@inspireculture.org.uk  

Thank you for taking the time to review this brief. 

 Further information: 

Inspire: Culture, Learning and Libraries is a charitable community benefit society delivering cultural and learning services across Nottinghamshire. Our mission is: “To inspire people to read, learn and enjoy culture”.