Tag: Grampian Storytelling

SPECTRA Festival 2024!

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Well Spectra Festival 2024 is fast becoming a distant memory! 

4 days of storytelling
16 hours of storytelling
Well over 1000 audience members (final numbers still to come in)
32 stories
5 bags of Irn Bru Jellybabies
2 annoying fairies
Numerous repeat visitors
And a wonderful, wonderful experience for Lindsey and I too!

Thankyou so much to the Spectra Festival team for having us along again – we loved our new location of the Cowdray Hall, our campfire and Granny’s Blankets! Thankyou to the Showsec security who did a marvellous job in all weathers, welcoming the crowds in. Thankyou of course to my storytelling partner in crime Lindsey Gibb who has joined me for her 3rd year as Guest Storyteller!
And Thankyou to all the listeners who made it all worthwhile every night!

Here are some photos 😀
(Thanks to Alice, Lynne and Adele for the kind permission to share their photos!)

The Silver Darlings (continued!)

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Anither grand day today at Ashley Road Primary School! The P3, 4 and 5 pupils (2 classes of each!) are fair gettin on wi their class songs – The Fisherman’s Lassie, The Barnyards O Delgaty and The Silver Darlings which I spoke about yesterday. (They’re also learning a fourth song which everyone is to join in with, but more on that in another post!)

There are a few videos online, but I like this one the best – the recording is the original by Alastair McDonald and the film that has been put to the song shows old footage of the fishing fleets and the fish gutting lassies swiftly preparing the fish to be salted and packed into barrels. The pupils fair enjoyed watching it!

Ashley Road School and the Silver Darlings

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It’s another busy week ! This time starting off with the pupils of Ashley Road School who we Scat Youth tutors are visiting to teach penny whistle, guitar, clarsach and Scots song!

I’m teaching the P3s The Barnyards O Delgaty and the P5s the Fisherman’s Lassie (both of which I’ve spoken about in previous posts)… but the P4s are learning The Silver Darlings – a song about the herring boom in Scotland which peaked in 1907. “The Silver Darlings” is a fond nickname for the herring.

The song was written by Jim McLean, Bob Halfin and Andy Hulskrammer and later on this week I’ll share a video of a recording of it with Alastair McDonald. (Find a discussion of the song origins here on mudcat: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40414 )

The pupils are taught the meaning of the song they’re learning – as well as any unfamiliar Scots words. Many pupils in each school have families who came from farther afield, but no matter where they’re from, they’re all doing a grand job of learning and pronouncing the Scots and Doric!

The image I’ve chosen to illustrate this post is an etching by James McBey (1883-1959) from 1908. The title is “Herring Fleet, Aberdeen” – the etching has made its way across the pond where it is stored at The Boston Public Library Arts Department. James McBey was local to the area and may be familiar to those that visit Aberdeen Art Gallery where there’s a fantastic exhibition of his work. My daughter and I love the interactive display of how etchings were made! (Thoroughly recommended!)

Spring Festival at Aberdeen University

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Next week will be a busy one teaching Scots Song with SC&T Youth and Spectra Festival over the coming weekend. Then I get a wee break before our final week in Aberdeen primary schools with the SC&T Tutors – just enough of a break to brush up on my DRAGON TALES for the University of Aberdeen Spring Festival Family Fun Day. It is of course the Year of the Dragon and so I’ll be telling tales of dragons and monsters from around the world!

The Confucius Institute will be organising all sorts of activities (dragon stories included!) at the Elphinstone Hall on Sunday 18th February from 10am to 4pm. 

Stories will be from 11am to 12pm and 1 to 2pm

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/19843

A Grand Week at Sunnybank School

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I’ve got some braw photies for you today from my week with SC&T Youth at Sunnybank School!

As I said in my post at the start of the week, the P6s were learning The Barnyards O Delgaty – quite the feat for those with non-Scots families, but they pronounced the Scots beautifully and I wis affa impressed wi their “knyot” in Meg MacPherson’s brose!

I posted a link to clarsach tutor Irene singing the song earlier this week, but here’s a link to Bothy Champion Joe Aitken’s performance at the Keith TMSA Festival in 2021 – back when we were still aa daen festivals fae oor livingrooms!

The Barnyards O Delgaty is sung about 22 minutes into Joe’s performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yqCYp2O0U

The photo below is of my Dad’s Uncle Willie – taken around 1920. I wanted to show the bairns what ploughing horses looked like, all yokit up. (Uncle Willie is clearly spruced up for this photo, wi his pocket watch and everything!)

The drawings are from a rather talented P6! First she drew one of Uncle Willie’s horses – long after the photo had been taken down off the board! And then she drew me and our cat Apollo 😍

(Apollo is looking mean because he clawed my arm in a moment of “I love you – I love attacking you!” leaving me with a rather obvious scratch, hehe 😃 )

I love when these visits inspire the kids in so many different ways ❤

Spectra 2024!

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Don’t forget Spectra Festival is next week! 
Spectra is Aberdeen’s Festival of Lights and this year is returning for its 10th anniversary of the first Spectra in 2014. 

Lindsey Storyteller and myself will be telling tales in the Cowdray Hall between 6 and 10pm each night – some inspired by the various artworks across the city. Come hear a tale of a stubborn princess wooed by the lords of the local industries – she’d rather ignore them and hang out wi the seagulls instead!

(Now I’m getting carried away and considering Greggsy Granite, Shuggie Shipbuilder, Farquar Fash and … I don’t know. The temptation to have a golfing tycoon is huge. HUGE!)

Fizzy and Fuzzy the Fairies will be back (oh no) with a new story of their own – all about the giant beastie that rolls the sun across the sky!

SC&T Youth at Sunnybank School

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Another fun week with SC&T Youth ahead! This week we’re in Sunnybank School and one of the songs I’m teaching is The Barnyards Of Delgaty

We’ve just had one lesson so far, but the class that’s learning it was doing a grand job o the Doric – pronouncing kynot like natives and huppin and crackin at the right moments! 😃

The Barnyards o Delgaty is a Bothy Ballad from the North East of Scotland – a song from the farming traditions over 100 years ago. The loons (boys and men) would be employed in the farm and would be housed in the bothy – where they’d sleep, cook and wash – or maybe in a chaumer – in which case they’d get their food cooked by the kitchy demes (quines or lassies that worked on the farm, often in the kitchen).

Their jobs would range from Orra Loon (the young lad that got all the odd jobs to do), to plooman (ploughing) or one of the top jobs – Heid Horseman (in charge of the horses who pulled the ploughs).

The songs were written about real farms and people and could be on various subjects “Our crew is the best!” “This farmer is an absolute rotter” “I’m in love with the farmer’s daughter” or even “That time the pig got drunk and caused chaos” – The Barnyards O Delgaty is one of the best known Bothies and tells of a lad who was promised a wonderful farm, but turned out to find it wis affa!

Wur Clasarch teacher Irene Watt has a grand video online which explains fit the song is aa aboot! Often these songs are sung unaccompanied, but Irene’s got nae jist a ukulele, but a friendly cuddy (horse) an aa!

I’ll post anither video the morn – by aene o oor local bothy loons!

A Busy Week – SC&T, Clashfarquhar and Braehead

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I had a very busy week last week with SC&T Youth! But I also also a visit to Clashfarquhar House (where the residents joined in with the Wellyboot Song and had some fun stories from Aberdeenshire and beyond) an then at the end of the week I visited Braehead Primary School whose project this term has the wonderful title “I am a Storyteller”

I told stories to all the pupils – from the wee ones in the nursery, where we had a wonderful adventure in Seaton Park and fed a monster rainbow ice cream (after almost being lunch ourselves!) – all the way up to Primary 7, who got a couple of my scarier tales. All primaries were encouraged to ask questions about stories and storytelling – the different ways of sharing a story with an audience, what makes a good story, and what makes a good storyteller!

The drawing below is by one of my favourite artists. It’s The Nøkken by Theodore Kittelsen. He’s famous for his paintings and illustrations of fairy tales, particularly trolls!

The reason I’m sharing this here is that I told a tale of a North East Kelpie and explained to the pupils that there were other similar creatures in stories around the world. One boy was very interested and asked if I knew any – and the first that came to mind was the Nøkken who play the violin and tempt their human pray into the water. They are also shape-shifters, one of their forms being that of a horse. Just like our Kelpies!

Week 2 with SC&T Youth

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This week I am enjoying my second week of five with the affa fine tutors of SC&T Youth – we’re in Riverbank Primary this week and we’re teaching tunes and songs to P3, P4 and P5.

P5 are learning the Fisherman’s Lassie and made sure I had some help up at the front of the class from Charmander here. Who knew Pokemon were such good singers!?

SC&T Youth Tutoring – Scots Song at St Peter’s School

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Well that was a fun week for the SC&T Youth tutors at St Peter’s Primary School in Aberdeen!

P4, 5 and 6 pupils learned clasarch, guitar, whistle, and Scots song every morning, with a concert on Friday where they were able to show off the tunes and songs they’d learned to the rest of the school and their teachers. P4 and 5 instruments would accompany the P6 singers, for example. 

Here’s a photo of P6 enjoying a video of Joe Aitken singing the Barnyards of Delgaty – they were all singing along within a couple of choruses! I was especially impressed with their pronunciation of all the Doric words which were new to almost all the pupils.

One of the P6 girls drew this amazing portrait of me! – I love it when pupils do that! There are some amazing details in there – I’m particularly loving the duck earrings!

I’m really looking forward to next week when we’ll be sharing songs and tunes with the pupils of Riverbank Primary School.