As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022, Povestry is happy and grateful to share Hector’s Talent, a story of a young red squirrel in Kelvingrove Park who is looking for his purpose. Over the course of a week, Hector tries different activities, from painting, cooking, ice skating, and science, only to discover that his gift was part of his life all along. While the text was first written in English, we know that stories are shared in Scotland in more than one language and primary schools are just one of the multitude of environments where cultural diversity is celebrated.
Povestry has recently celebrated its first anniversary and we are overjoyed to have been able to contribute several projects to our multicultural Govanhill community. As a community organisation, Povestry was contoured from a collective hope to encourage and contribute to a multicultural dialogue where community integration and active citizenship are shaped through storytelling and folklore for the Eastern European communities living in Scotland. For this reason, our ethos is to organise and share projects where diversity and inclusion move hand in hand with stories (in all the forms that these may take from written texts to customs and food) and heritage.
In January 2022, we organised two Burns Night events in the Bee’s Knees Café as part of the BEMIS Scottish Winter Festival: Cooking with Burns, where individuals and families from diverse backgrounds were given ingredients traditionally connected to Burns Supper and invited to adapt them to prepare their favourite dishes from their home countries, and Reading with Burns, where participants shared their favourite poems by Rabbie Burns in translation (Polish, Romanian, Italian among others).
Through our current project and in a year where stories are truly at the forefront of Scottish cultures and communities, we hope to encourage a dialogue between children who are otherwise unable to communicate with peers who come from different backgrounds, to form friendships and learn a new language together. Young pupils from different countries can now sit together with two (or more) versions of Hector, learn from each other a new language, and discover the shared vocabulary of friendship and community. Additionally, we hope that Hector will be a helpful companion to educators, families and communities, providing a tangible instrument to recognise diversity and multiculturalism within the Scottish classroom. Moving between his own education and outdoor learning, Hector reminds everyone that ‘talent’ is more than a particular skill when it is inclusive!