Celebrating storytelling and stargazing with young people in care & care leavers

In January 2018, Derbyshire Virtual School received significant funding from Arts Council England and the National Lottery for a creative project off shoot from Story Roots called, ‘Stars and Stories’. This exciting project was designed by four Derbyshire care leavers and enabled young people, carers, support staff and foster families across Derbyshire to enjoy stargazing and storytelling over a 12 month period of creative activity.

Stars and Stories was partly inspired by the Adverse Camber production, Dreaming the Night Field: a legend of Wales. Four care leavers together with Royal Astronomical Society fellow and space journalist, Nick Spall and professional storyteller and writer, Maria Whatton saw the production at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. The opening section, which describes constellations in the night sky, related to mythical characters in the story, prompted the young people to dream up their own stories and uncover some of the science behind the stars.  A performance of work developed through the project and eventually played to an audience of over 250 people at Wirksworth’s celestial amphitheatre, the Star Disc, as part of  Wirksworth Festival 2018. Read about how the project turned out.

The Stars and Stories project was made possible thanks to a partnership between Derbyshire Virtual School and Adverse Camber, with significant funding from Arts Council England plus Cooperative Community Dividend Fund, the Royal Astronomical Society, Tesco’s Bags of Help, Scopes4SEN, Foundation Derbyshire, Walbrook Trust, William and Griselda Kerr Fund and the National Space Centre.