You are listening to the I am a Storyteller podcast from Inspire, Culture, Learning and Libraries. This podcast is hosted by Annie Warren. During the series, Annie talks to a storyteller or storytellers from the project and also members of the Inspire team in a bid to share valuable insights and learning gained from the project. 

Hi, and welcome to episode two of the I Am a Storyteller Podcast. I'm your host Annie Warren, and today I'll be talking to Andy Barrett, one of the project's storytellers. Andy Barrett is a Nottingham based community storyteller, playwright, and academic. With Excavate, he's worked with thousands of local people to explore their histories, culture, stories, and identity, producing site specific community plays, touring shows, films, and a series of audio walks, including Sherwood Voices with Inspire. His plays for radio and stage include Dolly, a cloning meets country and western musical.

Which The Times selected as one of their top five shows of 2010. Skybus, which took place on board a bus to East Midlands Airport and back. Tony's Last Tape, based on the Ben Diaries, which was performed in the Houses of Parliament. Barbecue 67 for Radio 4, which tells the story of an infamous rock festival in Spaulding, Lincolnshire, and features Geno Washington and Nick Mason. Andy has always been interested in the ways that people can tell and share their own stories, leading him to make work for all kinds of contexts, including a touring play for mental health clinics in Kerala.

Street Theatre for the National Theatre of Kosovo, and audio stories for the NHS Exploring End of Life Care. For I am a storyteller, Andy was commissioned to work with residents of Bowbridge Court Care Home in Newark, which offers 24-hour residential and dementia care. Welcome to the podcast, Andy. Hello, good to be here. Yeah, it's so great to have you here in our Inspire podcasting studio. so I thought to kick us off, we could talk a little bit about the workshops that you ran. So could you tell us a bit about the group that you work with and the work that you did with them?

So it was a group of residents from Catholic Newark. It was a kind of open drop-in session, so it wasn't sure who would be there. But luckily, I had a consistent group of people that kind of stuck with me the whole way, which was fantastic. The numbers were it was between about kind of six, seven, eight, nine, mainly ladies, and all with kind of differing levels of memory loss, shall we say. So most of the people I worked with were verbal and would share their stories. Some were a lot quieter than others. There were a few people that kind of wandered in and wandered out. And over the course of the work there was always some staff supporting me. They were great. and then volunteers would turn up and sometimes some family members would appear. Then in the middle of a session, you know, somebody would have to go off to get their hair cut or a dentist would appear.

So there was a kind of an element of chaos to it, but it was actually pretty consistent, which was great because it meant I got to really get to know the group, individually as well as groups. So we get we had quite a good rapport going. Yeah. So yeah, that that was great. And and the work the work was about gathering, trying to encourage them to share stories and memories and for me to experiment with different ways to provoke that.

to try and get them to inhabit a kind of creative and reflective and imaginative space. So to really delve into experiences as much as they could and also to share it amongst the group. It was kind of very much based around conversation and talking to each other. I mean there were activities that people did things individually, but generally it was kind of a group of us around a table having a good time, which is what it always was.

But always about memory, you know, I kind of made it clear from the beginning, you know, that that this was a project in which I was a storyteller and they were going to be storytellers and it was going to result in a some storytelling that was based on their storytelling. and that I was because my mum has vascular dementia, that I was interested in them as people that were going through a similar or connected process to my mum.

In that they were losing their memories and and I was interested in that. So I was very open with them and they were cool with that. So yeah, that's that's kind of what what it was. It was kind of an exploration of memory between us. It sounds like it sounds really interesting. And I know you mentioned your mum. was this your first time working with people with living with dementia or memory loss? No. I mean it's I've worked in care homes intermittently throughout


Quite a long period of time now. And you're aware when you look back on it, because actually, dementia as as a kind of term and a terminology, you know, very often when you when when I look back in time, you kind of think, yeah, of course, that person had dementia, you know. so I think I've met lots of people that I've worked with that have been suffering from dementia over the piece. And I have done things that specifically with those groups. I worked with a great practitioner called Guy Lejeune at

The International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam. He specializes in working with people with memory loss and and older folk. A number of the techniques that I used kind of came from workshops I'd done with him. And then also when when my mum before she moved into the home, I was kind of very I I was testing out ideas from the workshops I'd done with Guy, with her actually.

try and see if they if they work. If they work. Yeah. She was like my guinea pig without realising it. but this was the first time that I'd I kind of worked consistently with a a group over a period of time and which I'd turned up and said, This is about dementia. I mean it wasn't about dementia, but this is about memories and memory loss and how we access memories and what memories mean and how what it means to us when our memories start to slip and how we cope with that and ways in which we can prop up our memory recall.

So so not the first time but the most in-depth period of work. So it sounds like, you know, you've had you had quite a lot of experience working with people with dementia and memory loss previously, but was there anything specifically related to, I suppose, working with a group of people over a longer period of time that was particularly surprising or challenging that you didn't expect? It wasn't really, to be honest. And it's not to do with the people, but it's to do about being in their space.

Where you turn up with a kind of plan, you turn up with bits of work that you've fashioned based on conversations and stories that have happened the week before to share. And then when you arrive, you find out, yeah, this is the day that the dentist is coming or whatever. And you know, and that person who wants to come isn't able to be there because there's something else going on. So the kind of sporadic nature of that.


It felt like it was a consistent group and then you realised that actually it wasn't and that any stage that could go. There was a really nice moment for me when in fact it was when the dentist came, two people said, No, I'm not going to the dentist, I'm staying here. Because this is more fun. That's really great. So it sounds like that in that sense the challenges were sort of more logistical than actually to do with accessing the memories in that way. Yeah. I mean the the good thing about having a group that you return to is that you can say

Because, you know, I said, Look, this is a storytelling project and I'm gonna be telling a story, but I want you your your voices are gonna be part of it in some way. You can model that and turn up the next week and go, I wanna share something with you. Yeah. which with me was making little audio pieces from recordings of them and then adding stuff. And and them hearing them, these stories was was really powerful because first of all, because they have dementia, very often they'd forg

Well, they'd forgotten they'd told me them the week, you know, the week before. So they would say, I've not remembered that for years. Which which was quite amusing in a way, you know. but also having those stories presented back to them, but added with with kind of sound really took them out of you know, it it made the story s slightly different. It wasn't just their voice, it it kind of gave it a professional edge or

took it more seriously somehow and they were really thrilled, I think, and and caught up in hearing themselves tell their story. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's something really special about having your own voice recorded and played back to you with with these sound effects. It's so evocative and probably helps access memories in some ways as well, even if, you know, you think you haven't told it in years, but actually it was last week. It's probably really helpful. Exactly. And something that you never would have heard. Yeah.

Yeah, you would have never heard it otherwise. It's like funny being on this podcast because we can hear our own voices back to us, and it's in a way that you've never really heard your own voice before. So I can relate to that definitely. and so were there any ways, kind of as the workshops went on, did you stick to a plan or did you have to kind of like modify and adapt as you went at all? I didn't stick to a plan. I knew that I wanted to use


It as an exploratory process. One of the things about the I Am a Storyteller project is the training element as part of it, which we might come on to. Yes, we might do. And what that did was for me help frame the project as a kind of, to a certain extent, a kind of artistic development project, but also like a research project. So I thought, right, I'm gonna just try different things each week. And if they don't work, well.

I know that doesn't work, you know, it was worth trying. So I had a rough idea in my mind of the different techniques I wanted to use, but they changed partly depending on what was happening in the home. So for instance, the second week I was asked if I would come in on a different day and there was gonna be a picnic. So I thought, blamey, I'll do something based around food. So I I kind of h had all this all these ideas and and also because it was gonna be a picnic, that's right, there were gonna be family members coming in.

So I thought was gonna be a very different session. We're gonna be outside. There's gonna be more people, there's gonna be smaller groups of people with their family members. It'd be really good to get the family members to be part of the kind of storytelling process. So I recorded lots of kind of questions and prompts on these little sound tiles which I handed out, which they could just hit with their hand and and and these questions and provocations would would erupt.

And it was all around looking back thinking about food and memories around food and who taught us to cook and what recipes can we remember. But then also thinking about recipes for life. And I had, you know, I I gave them out these paper plates and bits of baking paper because I said, wouldn't it be nice in the performance if we gave out cakes to the audience and when they started eating them inside they found these bits of good advice, which was a kind of crazy idea. But now I've got to bake these flipping cakes. so

That was the plan. But when when I got there, it was so hot they couldn't have the picnic because it was it was in one of the heat waves when I was delivering the workshop. And also they'd just eaten. So nobody was really hungry anyway. So there I was dressed as a chef with a with a rolling pin and a massive bag of stuff, absolutely sweating like crazy. Cause I'd bought it all up from the train station and and it was a totally different thing. So so yeah, there was always that kind of adaptability of what was going on, but also I was realizing that sound.

particularly was the most effective way of transporting people into other locations and memories and places particularly, you know, really helped the residents and the participants be in other places. there so f one of them, I must say this 'cause it is so lovely, I played on the very first the one of the very first things I did was just play a load of sounds and I played a s sound of some s a steam train in a busy train station.

And this lady who really wasn't saying very much at all, she suddenly kind of I can't remember she stood up, but she kind of threw her head back and threw her arms back and she just went, Can you remember being on a train and s when the window was open and feeling the wind on your face? And and and the rest of the group started doing this same movement and everyone was around this table with their arms out, kind of shaking their heads as though the wind was kind of, you know, blowing through their hair and onto their faces.

And was so lovely. And I just kind of sat back and kept quiet for about five minutes and just let them talk about this these these memories. And that was abs that just came from the sound, you know. So yeah. So I used a lot of sound because I knew that that was always going to be w work. Yeah, yeah. So going forward did continuing to use sound because it worked so well. Yeah, I love that. So you mentioned the training there or the continuing professional development, the C P D that you received. Can you tell us a little bit about that? and did you learn anything during that that was helpful?

Throughout the project? There yeah, it was really useful. there were a number of different sessions looking at different things. There was one specifically around dementia, and there was one that was about creating inclusive and welcoming spaces for people with a big variety of needs. Like I said, you know, the first thing that was so useful about it was the way it framed the project for me. Yeah. The second is that actually as a freelance artist,

you you never get to do stuff like that and get paid to do it. So that was fantastic. The thing I was most interested in the training, I've not had a chance to use yet, which is about the creating welcoming and inclusive spaces. Because you're going to a home, they've already done all of that. You know, the space is defined. But as part of the project and as part of my work, I will be delivering workshops in library spaces. And so I will get a chance then to kind of take that


learning into into that experience. The dementia training, a lot of it was stuff that I kind of intuitively had kind of from my personal experience had learned. But there was also it was a lot of it's about communication, how you communicate with people with dementia. And I did I did find that really useful because I I kept reminding myself it's like paraphrase, you know, once people have said things, constantly try and

tie things together and to paraphrase what's been said to kind of consolidate all the way through. Slow down. and I did. I was really nice. I think I was nice and slow. there was something we were told often people dementia miss every fourth word. that's interesting. yeah, which I did I found that really interesting. So so again that's that kind of slowing down thing.

Yeah, it makes sense slowing down and paraphrasing and repeating l in a different way. Yeah. It makes sense. Absolutely. And there was also we were told about this anal about memory, this this idea of the analogy of the bookcase that our memories like imagine our memories are stored on a kind of bookcase, a quite a badly made bookcase and and that dementia's like a storm that's coming and the bookcase starts to rock and and our most recent memories are the ones on the top shelf and they fall off quicker than the ones at the bottom.

which I found really interesting, but there's a connection that that next to that is an emotional bookcase that has the emotional memories. But that's made of sturdier stuff. So the the the kind of factual memories might fall off, but the emotions connected to that might remain. So so that was really interesting in both in in kind of reminding myself of the importance of creating provocations that would really

place people emotionally in in in a landscape actually. Yeah. And that goes back to what you were saying about the sound and and and the ladies with the with the wind in their hair because that's, you know, it's the fact of being on a train, but it's the emotion and it's the it's the experience of feeling the wind in their hair that everyone could really get behind and join in with, which really makes sense to what you're saying. And I'm very jealous 'cause we can't open windows on trains anymore. So we don't get to feel that. Suppose we can get it in a car a bit. Yeah, so I know that the project is sort of at its heart, has this idea of


Co-creation. And so I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about co-creation and collaboration and whether you have a definition of either of them, how they how they're the same, how they differ from each other. Terms are funny old things, aren't they? Yes. Really. how useful are they? I mean they're very useful in certain situations. I don't know how useful they were to me. I mean, collab when I think of collaborate, I generally

You know, it's like we're gonna do this thing, would you like to collaborate on it? And there's a sense in which we know what we're gonna make somehow. But that needn't be the case. You can collaborate in a way that's totally open and and what comes out the other end is is utterly new. I mean, fundamentally if if if you're collaborating or co creating or work together or a as long if you're in a situation where you create an environment where everyone's voices can be heard and you're open that

To the fact that what comes out might be very different to what you imagined. I don't really mind what you call it. Yeah. But co-creation is to me something that I'm really interested in when you're working with different groups of people. Because one of the great things about doing storytelling, live storytelling and performance work is you can be quite radical in terms of form and structure, and you can create things that that are really unusual.

in terms of the the the the content, in terms of the materials that you use to tell a story, the way you can jump around, the way you might involve an audience. So you can be really inventive. I am really interested in how you collaborate and how you co-create. And a lot of my work is that I work with different groups of people and it's it's really important that the voices and the experiences of the people you work with are

included in the piece and that it's not just raw material. And I always feel a responsibility, particularly if you're somebody that has the skills and the budget, if you like, and the time and the resources to tell the story, to to create the work, that it is genuinely informed by the work that you've done together. The great thing about doing live work and str live storytelling work


Performance-wise, which is what I'm planning to do, is that you can be quite radical. You can experiment with the form, with the structure, with the materials that you use, with the way you interact with the audience. you could, you know, I'm I'm gonna be doing a piece that I'm gonna ask some of the ladies to get involved in in some way, not quite sure how. So I really want it to be something that is co-created. Yeah, that's really interesting. It sounds like co-creation is sort of really built into your creative storytelling process.

Anyway, and I really liked what you said about live performance being like an inherently co-creative activity because you sort of have to be reactive to the room or the audience and and you know, with any live performance it's it's different every night, really, isn't it? Or every time you perform it. It's it's a messier thing. Yeah. And mess is a a really helpful thing to embrace both in a co creative sense, but also if you're doing something about memory.

Losing memory. as long you know, you just think, well, there's a group of people in a room, we're gonna tell a story, whatever happens is gonna be fun in the room, it's gonna be interesting, whatever order we put things in, if something happens, it doesn't matter. You know, we've got a structure, we've got a narrative, we know where we're going, we've got lots of kind of little moments we wanna communicate, we've got some thoughts. And my job is to find a loose enough but coherent theme or vehicle or narrative through line that ties all that together so that satisfying. Yeah. So that it makes sense and and is satisfying narratively, as well as having all these lovely ad libs and you don't know what's going happen and and like kind of including all of that in one cohesive structure, I guess. Yeah. And that's that's great fun of writing stories. I mean that's what stories are. You you've got a whole load of stuff and how do you reincorporate it?

At the end, you know. And there are always ways. I mean, the more threads you throw out, the more ways you realise there are tying them all together at the end. Infinite ways. Yeah. That sounds really interesting. It sounds like it's gonna make for a really dynamic storytelling and I think takes a lot of courage to do something like that in front of a lot of people because you don't know you don't know what's gonna happen. So that's really exciting. No, but I will I'm I'm

Pretty good at creating things that look messier than they are. Nice. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. You do know what's gonna happen, really. Yeah. Yeah, of course. It's just not how you're gonna get there. It's all pretense. Great. So can you tell us about what you might create for your commission piece? Yes, it's going to be a live storytelling event at the home on November the fifth on fireworks night, but it it won't be on the evening.

And it will be open to the public. They're they're quite keen on kind of inviting people in. And it will be me telling a story, and there'll be bits of sound and there'll be projections and I'm hoping that one of the ladies will recite a bit of Shakespeare. That that she had a few lines of Shakespeare that came to mind and she loves Shakespeare. So I said I'll work with her to kind of maybe get her to do a little bit. There's they like singing.

There's a a woman that's got a fantastic voice. and I'm kind of quite keen on the idea of a couple of songs appearing. So it will be something probably lasts like thirty, forty minutes. and it'll be, yeah, just a kind of a public storytelling thing. So I'm gonna go back once once I've kind of shaped it into, you know, something that is beginning to make sense, I'll go back to to meet the group and get them to to

for us to think about how how they can be involved i in the in the performance in some way and then obviously it'll be a case of turning up on the day in an hour before kind of meeting them and go, right, when I do this, remember to do that, you know. So it'll be it'll be quite chaotic. But but I want it to be a shared thing. That sounds amazing. And I hope I hope it goes really well. And I hope that obviously by the time this podcast goes out, it will have happened. So I hope it also went really well, if that makes sense. And so almost

Our final question, but is there any advice that you'd give any other workshop facilitators who might be interested in working with similar groups? 

Yeah, there is actually. One of the things that I realised, I mean, first of all, the the sessions that we did went on and on and on. You know, we we could have talked forever and messed around forever and drawn forever what what we would you know, in terms of the sessions that ran. So by the time they finished, I was pretty, you know, kind of I was quite tired and it was hot and I walked back to the train station. It was sunny, so I'd pop in for a pint somewhere, you know. And then the next day I was always busy. And the the thing that I didn't do enough of, I did a bit of it, was to really immediately when something's finished, to find the time to kind of write down everything that you can remember. Because one of the really difficult things in this work is how you document what's going on while you're doing it. So I recorded stuff. I had a recorder and we used that quite a lot. And I would give it to people as well and say if you want to you know, somebody's talking, you want to hold it and record them, you can. But the the thing is, one of the one of the challenges of this work is the relationship between an individual and the group and the and the wider group. And very often it can take a while to kind of engage in a in a conversation with somebody and draw a story out. And you can be quite aware of what's happening with the rest of the group. So that's always a kind of tension that that you're playing with. And so you might start something and go off to somebody else and you know there's a really good conversation happen.

at the end of the table between two other people and you'd love to be able to document it in some way. Or you're hearing bits of it. But you don't want to be making notes all the time. You want to be looking at people. You know, you've got to look them in the eye, remember that they forget every fourth word, speak slowly. That's not gonna work if you're asking them questions or listening to them and and making notes. Or can you say that again? I didn't hear you kind of thing. So that is that is the the toughest thing is is how you

don't miss what's happened. So I think absolutely building that into into your time, which might mean finishing a bit earlier actually, to kind of go, right, no, I'm gonna stop now because actually I need this half an hour to sit in a quiet room or wherever a and and get the material down. But because it was such fun and everyone was having a good time, we just kept going until it kind of got too late to you know, to keep carrying on.

and that's fine as well, because you know, when I'm there with a group, that's the most important thing is our relationship and their fun, really. So that's the first thing. The the other thing is just never underestimate people. And and everyone is full of stories and experience and the older you get, the more of them you've got. They just may be more difficult to access. But but you know, they're there. and there are ways. Obviously, it becomes harder when people become nonverbal. That that is a much, much more difficult situation. And there were a couple of people that would come in and out of the sessions and and to a certain extent, again, you know, you can worry a bit about it and think, what are they getting out of it? You know, I I'm really I'm struggling to understand what they're saying. But you just have to trust that actually it's kind of okay and and not beat yourself up about it too much if if you're not sure whether or not they're engaging because you just don't know. So, you know, don't be too kind of you know, get too concerned about that.

Mm-hmm. I really like that. think that's really good advice, especially the kind of practical element of finding a way to record it. Because as you said, everyone does have these stories. But I think they can be quite dependent on creating that connection and that relationship with someone so that they feel like they can be, you know, it's a vulnerable thing to tell a story. So to feel like they can tell you a story, you do have to be making eye contact and talking to them and actively listening rather than writing down all the time. And then, as is the nature of memory.

These things might leave our heads very quickly. So yeah, finding a place afterwards where you can get that down as quickly as possible and remember as much as you can. I think that's really, really good practical advice and always good advice to not be too hard on yourself as well, I feel. So final question, Andy. I wanted to ask what you've enjoyed most about the project just as a whole. As always, it's the people that you work with and getting to know them. and the fact that it was a group that were pretty consistent. that that was great.

The thing that you always enjoy, or that I always enjoy, and I'm sure it's the case with most people that deliver workshops, is when when you're planning a workshop, particularly if it's new stuff, or it's a group that you don't know or you're not done before, you plan and you hope things are gonna work and then you turn up and of course some things don't work or some things you thought were gonna take half an hour, take three minutes. But then if something really does work, it's you think, fantastic, I've invented something. you know, that I've not done before and it works and I can use that again. And that that did happen a number of times. But it really it's the group it was the group and and getting to know them. The l the last session we did, I bought in a load of hats and I just said, Who wants a hat? And and they put a hat on and then we said, who's who does that remind us of? And and without me leading it, it ended up we developed this entire kind of Agatha Christie-like story of there being this bottle of wine that being donated from the Queen to a raffle in the home.


that been stolen and we needed to know who who had stolen it. And I've got all these pictures of of the women and one of the the the chaps that turned up, all wearing these fantastic hats, all with these great names that we've invented, and which I'm gonna try and turn into like film posters or something. And that I think that'll be a key part of the story that I tell will be this kind of detective story that we invented.

and they were so they got so caught up in it. And there was one woman that a had not said a great deal but had obviously enjoyed the sessions. And she was like this incredible stor you know, like she could have been Agatha Christie. She was coming up with all these crazy ideas about horse racing and a woman that has to have an operation 'cause she's done too much knitting and her hands don't work anymore. And it and it was just brilliant. So and that that came from getting to know them, you know, and and being really comfortable with them. So

That was the most enjoyable thing, is is just spending time with these great bunch of mainly women. But yeah, Andy, thank you so much for coming in to talk about your experiences and for sharing your your time with us. You've been very generous with telling us everything and yeah, it's just been really fascinating. So thank you for being here. Thanks for inviting me.


You've been listening to the I Am a Storyteller podcast from Inspire Culture Learning and Libraries. I am a Storyteller is the third stage of our I Am a Creator program, which is funded by investment from Arts Council England through our status as a national portfolio organisation. To find out more about the project, our storytellers, the audiences who took part, and the outcomes, you can visit our website at inspireculture.org.uk forward slash I am a storyteller.