Tales from the Edge of Town 2025

We are excited to start a new creative project with children from Abbey Ward funded by Cambridge City Council. Over the next two months we will be running creative workshops with The Galfrid School and Abbey People – children will take part in storytelling, animation, painting, filmmaking and creative archaeology. At the end, we will make a show to share with the community in our Mongolian Yurt performed by members of NIE’s ensemble.

We began by asking children what they remembered from their recent past… everyone’s birthdays featured… and we placed them on a timeline that stretched back to when the Vikings came, then the Romans and then way back to deep time when people walked across what is now the North Sea… nearly 1 million years ago.

Artefacts kindly lent by Wisbech and Fenland Museum prompted young imaginations to write their own stories mixing fact and fiction, past and present.

 “The objects were fabulous— it gave the children something concrete to spark their imaginations”

Year 5 Teacher

“impressed how the storyteller brought to life the children’s writing so quickly” 

Year 5 Teacher

As well as handling objects 500,000 years old, the children will be visiting the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology later this term.  And 10 teachers from the Elliot Trust have learnt about how local, place-based approaches to the curriculum can bring inclusion and relevance to what they teach.

With the new house building in Barnwell, we are curious to know if the developers will dig up any new/old artefacts. And, importantly, in one of the most deprived parts of Cambridge, we want to offer the local children an opportunity to use art to strengthen creativity, identity, confidence and belonging.

“Excellent… placing each child in the longer timeline of human history was super powerful”

Year 5 teacher