The Magic of Being a Children's Storyteller

So with Siggistardust magic taking over the borough of Chelsea and Kensington I couldn’t help but share with you why more than anything, I love Storytelling.

For those of you and by now many of you, who have been to a Siggistardust storytime in one venue or another, you will know that it’s a quite an event.
When that famous big red storyteller’s hat goes on, something new, exciting and magical takes over the room. And the best thing is, the kids feel it. If they are 1 years old or 5, the magic comes alive!

Since I was a little girl, one thing permeated my every decision in my art, my comics, my plasticine characters, and that was did it convey a good story. Did the characters have depth. Where were they from, did they have an accent that differentiated them from the rest.

Ironically, due to my circumstances and suffering with a type of dyslexia, reading was always something I struggled with and to be honest, I still do. Give me a great children’s book anything from 10- 50 pages I will fly with adventure and charisma in my reading, but give me a huge Harry Potter or The Alchemist and you got me stuck. Which is where I encountered a contradicting catch 22, stumbling block, while growing up. Statistically there are so many children in the country with reading problems. Which is why the UK Reading Agency have the Summer Reading Challenge every summer time encouraging kids to read more books. Thanks to the hundreds of volunteers and people like just me, I feel like we made a difference together in giving children of all kids, a way to engage with reading in a safe unjudgemental environment that brings out the best in them.

 I self taught myself screenwriting whilst still at school. It was my way of making up for what I couldn’t connect to in books that were presented to me. I felt the format of scripts were far easier to manoeuvre through and I was always was greatly drawn to the idea of character dialogue. My eyes flowed gracefully over the words and my brain could digest what was trying to be conveyed. I spend my teens in-between frantically writing screenplays and bringing them visually to life with complementary comic book /storyboards. Someone once commented that clearly the only reason I occasionally turned up to school was for research material, as when I wasn’t inspired I didn’t really turn up. By the age of 16 I had boxes upon boxes with thousands of story or dialogue ideas, no one even knew about. I guess it’s no wonder when I was called to CBBC for that famous meeting at age 15 to discuss one of my stories, 7 top exec producers were the ones waiting for me not the PA I was expecting.

In truth? I was just a teenager passionate about telling stories and bringing them visually to life. And it’s something that has stayed with me ever since, through all my opportunities, disappointments and experiences.

I wish life had taken me a different path in terms of my upbringing and reading, but it’s now something I want to inspire children to do and fall in love with. If it’s bringing characters to life, through eccentric high pitched voices, or to low cockney Yorkshire farmer accents. I have it all prepared! In fact as a friend sarcastically pointed out, finally, I have found an outlet for my 43 accents and endless characterizations I spend my sleepless nights perfecting, instead of counting sheep.

Children have so much to develop, learn and get inspired by to become the best they can be and imagination is the key to life. Imagination if developed is what allows a person to get a message of divine inspiration to take either stay in their unhappy life, or come up with an out of the box idea who to recreate their situation into a better one, create themselves a job that isn’t offered to them,
or knowing a genius ideas as to where to look to find a partner that’s right for them.

All inspirations, I believe that come from their right brain if developed.

As Siggistardust Storytime spreads to more public venues from libraries to children’s centres, to anything really where kids go to develop, learn and have fun, I hope I will have the opportunity to inspire your children and take them on the journey they deserve to fly on.


Till next time,

Siggi
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