Sheherazade, 1001 Stories for Adult Learning has come to an end! This Grundtvig Multilateral Project introduces storytelling as an educational strategy and a pedagogical tool in formal and non-formal adult learning. Through its focus on the linguistic, interactive, performing, social and cultural aspects of stories and storytelling, Sheherazade can help adult learners gain communication skills, develop imagination and creativity, improve intercultural understanding and build competences for inclusion.

During the project life time a high number of documents and materials have been created, all available for free on the project’s website: www.sheherazade.eu.

Sheherazade manual

The manual Sheherazade, 1001 Stories for Adult Learning contains the following sections:

• a review of the place/presence of storytelling in European adult training,
• the potential of storytelling for competence development,
• a methodological background for the use of storytelling in adult training including a large series of exercises and some advice for the adult trainer/storyteller,
• a set of good practice examples from all over Europe,
• a description of the pilots run by the Sheherazade partners,
• a large bibliography.

This manual has been published on the website in online read versions in 8 languages (English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Bulgarian), all of them also downloadable for free. A hard copy of the manual is also available in English and Dutch.

Sheherazade course model

Besides the manual the Sheherazade partners created a course model that provides adult educators/trainers with a full description of a possible 3 days course including objectives, a draft programme, a description of all the exercises used during the course by the trainers (and different from the ones issued in the manual), comments/questions of the participants and advice from the trainers/storytellers. This course model is also downloadable for free from the website.

Also available online…

• A summary of the results of our methodological research and the needs analysis in eight languages;
• Eight e-newsletters in English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish and Bulgarian;
• A summary of the interviews with storytellers;
• The videos of all the pilot projects run by the project partners (partner language with subtitles);
• Two videos on the Course and Final Conference in Alden Biesen.

The future

The Sheherazade consortium will continue to organise (Grundtvig) courses on the use of stories and storytelling for adult learning. This will be done in the frame of the funding opportunities in the new programme Erasmus+. Updated information on these courses will be available soon on the project website.

Follow the story of Sheherazade on www.sheherazade.eu

Project partners:

Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, BE, coordinator.
Fabula, storyteller association, SE
Oslo & Akershus University college, NO
CVO Landen-Leuven, BE
Brunnenpassage, AT
Meath Partnership, IE
Superact, UK
ELAN Interculturel, FR
Sofia University, BG