The Stone Soup Collective was a series of community events facilitated by a storyteller in partnership with a community hub in their local area. A ceilidh of stories, song, and dance with shared food, right in the heart of the community. Events took place across Scotland between 14 Oct – 30 Nov (plus a couple of events into 2023 due to postponements in unforeseen circumstances).
The Stone Soup is a European folk story in which strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a larger meal that everyone in the community can enjoy.
At the heart of this story is a message of welcoming strangers, integration, kindness and sharing our resources to enable community strength and support; and that is exactly what storytellers managed to achieve with their events.
We posed the following questions as a prompt for the groups:
Overall, 15 Stone Soup Collective events took place across Scotland from Edinburgh to Evanton in the Highlands. Over 300 people attended events which included the sharing of food at a time when the cost of living crisis was being felt acutely by everyone and especially the most vulnerable in our communities. Attendees included people with Dementia and their carers, New Scots, a local Dads’ group and their children, young people from the Chinese community in Glasgow, and school children in primaries across Lanarkshire to name a few.
People of Spanish, Ukrainian, German, Scottish, Syrian, Turkish, Polish and Chinese nationalities attended events.
Stone Soup Ceilidh
Wed 19 Oct 12-2pm The Scottish Storytelling Centre
The public were invited to join members of the Re-Act Scotland’s Syrian Refugee community groups plus New Scots from Refuweegee charity in Glasgow for a celebration ceilidh blending Scottish and Syrian traditional songs, stories, and dances. Tasty treats from both cultures were available to try. A feast for all the senses and best of all it was completely FREE to take part.
Storytellers Heather Yule and Lesley O’Brien had been working with the groups over 4 sessions each to share stories and cultural interests. This culminated in the Stone Soup Ceilidh where musicians Grant McFarlane and Ron Jappy led with some music and dancing. The storytellers shared tales and members from all the groups shared poems and stories from their cultures. Syrian singer Midya Jan sang songs in Arabic, Kurdish and Armenian.
Overall, 65 adults and 11 children took part in 12 sessions over 4 weeks. At the Ceilidh event there were 65 people in attendance – a full house!
The Stone Soup Ceilidh Project working with Re-Act Edinburgh and Refuweegee was made possible by the generous support of our funders, Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council (EVOC) and Glasgow Life’s Arts Development Scheme.
TRACS (Traditional Arts & Culture Scotland SC043009) brings together the Traditional Music Forum (SC042867), the Scottish Storytelling Forum (SC020891) and the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland (SC045085). TRACS is based at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which is a partnership project between the Storytelling Forum and The Church of Scotland (SC011353).
