Every year, crowds of book enthusiasts flock to Vilnius Book Fair to meet their favorite writers, learn what’s new on the bookshelves, and participate in a rich cultural program. In this 22nd Vilnius Book Fair “Image as Text” the joint stand of Panevėžys region libraries introduced to the fair guests the newly created library service – storytelling educations.
At the stand of Panevėžys region libraries, the fair visitors had the opportunity not only to hear about the benefits of storytelling art, but also to participate in five storytelling educations themselves. The youngest visitors of the fair got involved in the process of creating a story, based on Ieva Babilaitė’s non-verbal book “(Not) Alone”, eagerly participated in the ecology-themed education “Bee and I”, fought against evil in the education based on a folk fairy-tale “Twelve brothers – ravens”. The participants were enchanted by the rhythmic storytelling education for children, youth and adults “Stone Soup”. The story about the magic brush invited fair guests to dream and discuss together.
During the fair, 41 storytelling educational sessions were carried out and more than 400 visitors had the chance to participate. According to the librarians who presented the educations, the experience was really great. People saw first hand that stories involve, create the sense of community while at the same time give the chance to learn something new and applicable to their personal lives.
These storytelling educations were prepared within the framework of the project “Development of a Storytelling Art and Method Model for Lithuanian Libraries, in which twelve libraries of Panevėžys region participate. The storytelling art was taught by and the educations were created with the help of professional storytellers: Rose Marie Lindfors from the Nordic Storytelling Center (Sweden) and Tiril Bryn (Norway). Artist Neringa Minkevičienė created and prepared sets of educational tools for these programs.
The project is financed by
