SHAKING UP STORYTIME

Melanie Smith - 9 Mar 15

Stories have always been a big part of my life. I grew up in a very small town in Suffolk and there wasn’t very much to do there other than ride your bike and go out playing – which is ok when it’s sunny, but this is England!

I was reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda the other day with my daughter Violet and in some ways Matilda reminds me of me. As a child I was forever at the local library, maxing out my card and devouring all the books they had. Nothing much happened in my town, but in books you could go anywhere, see the world, eat different food, make new friends and lose yourself for hours on end in the most delightful worlds. They would inspire me to write my own stories and illustrate them (badly!).

When I had my son, Gabriel, I would read to him everyday – I loved doing all the funny voices for the characters and making him laugh. We’d watch movies together, go to the theatre – anywhere we could find a story – you would find us there.

I finally stopped reading him a bedtime story when he was 11 years old and I had my daughter. I started to read to her every night and now we often make up stories in the car if we’re on a long journey or on the train.

I feel stories are important to life and happiness. They have always been a way for me to feel connected with other people, and they have fed my imagination throughout my life.

So, I guess it was natural when I moved from London to Brighton eight years ago and I decided to go back to University to get my design degree, that stories were always at the forefront of my ideas.

I found university really tough, juggling the many balls of motherhood, and getting to grips with learning loads of new skills. Especially being surrounded by lots of people who were much younger than me and knew their way around Photoshop!

But four years later and I’m out the other side with a brand new life and my BIG idea, which came after I’d spent many evenings reading the same books again and AGAIN. Even with additional trips to the library our bedtime reading was becoming quite repetitive, and enough of the daytime routines already felt like Groundhog Day; I really didn’t want storytime to start feeling like that too!

I wanted to share my love of story making in a creative way that would spark the imagination of the kid-tech generation. I wondered if I had a go at creating some story beginnings, and a set of story locations or maps whether we could make bedtime stories a bit more interesting and get the children involved in making up their own stories.

Thus my ‘walk-in-books’ were born. I thought, if I could create something that had endless story possibilities, it could be like a great children’s ipad game but better because it would include some lovely creative interaction with your child instead of them staring at a screen.

I might be a nutter for trying to invent the wheel, but a ‘walk-in-book’ is a book that has been pulled apart so you’re left with just the important bits—the character, a map, a mask (to become a character!) and STORY cards to get you started.

My daughter loves the fact that I draw and write stories now. She has taken some of the STORY characters to school to show her friends what I have made. And I get to indulge my childhood passion for stories as a grown up, work for myself and be here when my children come home from school.

My new role feels like a win win, but it’s early days… watch this space for more ‘walk-in-books’ soon, and if you fancy wandering over to Kickstarter you can lay your hands on my first creation!

The first ‘walk-in-book’ Adventure to the Woods, is available exclusively via Kickstarter  – running until March 20. Support it… 

Motherhood is different for all of us… if you’d like to share your thoughts, why not join our Network & start posting?

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Melanie Smith

Melanie Smith recently graduated from LCC on the postgraduate course for Visual Communication. Since setting up her company, STORY, Melanie has been selected for a number of awards and prizes, notably Most Innovative Product award 2014 from Brighton University and Santander, and she was awarded Most Enterprising Individual during the Creative Enterprise Week at UAL in November 2014. Melanie is passionate about the arts and is often found in a gallery, a cinema or with her head in a book. Melanie is a creative designer, who took a break from design and arts producing to raise two children Gabriel 15, and Violet who is 5, and is now returning to her career with the express desire to produce and design products for parents and children, whilst sharing her love of stories and storytelling.

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