The Heart of the Story

"The Heart of the Story" is a training course aimed at youth workers, facilitators and educators active in the field of youth, hosted by the UK based organisation Coyote Initiatives. The idea for our course is born from the deep knowledge that storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool for education. It can address creativity, youth participation and employability, critical thinking and social responsibility. Europe at the moment is facing major problems. Among these, the dis-empowerment of young people who feel marginalised from society, can't find their place and don't know (or forget) how to realise their potential in life. Also, racism, intolerance and ignorance can be greatly fuelled by storytelling – as demonstrated by the media especially in this last year, and every totalitarian government. The main objectives of the training course are: - to identify and understand key elements and skills for storytelling, and explore their potential benefits for learning, personal development and employability; - to analyse the increased impact that stories (and media) have on phenomena such as “hate speech”, intolerance and open racism. We will discuss the new needs for awareness, ethics and knowledge that come with the social and digital era; - to explore the concept of “transformational storytelling”: using storytelling as an innovative tool to address change and personal development; - to use elements of gamification to make youth work more attractive and accessible to young people (especially marginalised YP); - to create an international network of youth workers and organisations, able to use storytelling to develop skills and methods and to have an innovative impact on local levels. The activities will be based on non formal and experiential learning methodologies, all centred on different aspects of Storytelling. We will work on the most classic and traditional forms (sitting around the fire) to the most contemporary, like cinema, comics and video games. The expected learning outcomes for the participants are: - to be trained on, and receive information about, innovative approaches based on Storytelling, illustrating specialistic concepts such as the Monomyth, the Way of Council, Gamification - and the work methodologies related to them - combining theory, practice and sharing reflections and good practice tips with trainers and colleagues; - to get more proficient in the understanding and use for educational purposes of Comics, Video games, Board Games - all media very popular in youth culture; - to increase awareness and learn how to better tackle their potential negative effects in youth work as well: the risk of addiction and escapism from reality, the possible manipulation and propaganda uses that can be used by authorities, political and social actors and governments. Working with games and stories in education is our biggest passion, and we sincerely wish to see more and more people trained to use them, and as enthusiastically and sincerely as we do. Training Team: Carmine Rodi Falanga (Italy, Czech Republic) https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toy/carmine-rodi-falanga.786/ Bára Rodi Bláhová (Czech Republic) https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toy/bara-rodi-blahova.1932/ Mafalda Morganti (Italy) https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toy/mafalda-morganti.2923/ Steven Gasgarth (UK) https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toy/steven-gasgarth.3132/