Storytelling
Sept 2002 –Jan 2004 Traveling with Bulgarian/Romanian Travellers.
April 2004 Charlie and the Chocolate factory experience. With Cambridge Central Libraries, touring to St Neots Library and St Ives Library.
August 2004 Charlie and the Chocolate experience. With Cambridge Central Libraries, touring to Histon library, March Library, Barhill Library, Warboys Library, Chatteris Library.
April 2005 Classic tales tour with Cambridge Central Library. Touring to March, Barhill, St Ives, St Neots, Cottenham, Willingham.
June 2005 Hans Christian Andreson tour wirh Cambridge Central Library. Touring to March, Barhill, St Ives, St Neots, Cottenham, Willingham, Histon, Warboys, Willingham.
July 2005 Picnic in the park a selection of Bulgarian and Russian tales in a two hour performance.
July 2005 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Book release night. Employed to entertain the crowd with ghost stories and stories of magic.
July 2005 Bushmead school festival. A selection of traditional stories in a two hour performance.
August 2005 Wisbeach events forum. A selection of traditional stories in an hour set.
October 2005 Traditional tales in an hour set for Cambridge Central and St Neots Libraries.
Feb 2006 Park and Read event. Traditional stories on a double decker bus. All day event stories every hour.
August 2006 Huntingdon District council. Art attack. Storytelling and puppet making workshop.
October 2006 Huntingdon District council. Art attack. Storytelling and puppet making workshop.
November 2006 Borders book shop event. Traditional Stories in an hour event.
December 2006 Alex wood house care home. Free stories for Christmas day.
Salvaton Army free stories for Christmas day. Bethnany Francias Children’s Hospice free stories for christmas day.
January 2007 Huntingdon District council. Art attack. Storytelling and puppet making workshop.
February 2007 Youth Hostel association. 3 week storytelling programme.
April 2007 Storytelling with Taffy Thomas in his Grasmere garden.
May 2007 Storytelling with Taffy Thomas in his Grasmere garden.
May 2007 Storytelling for the Hawkshead beer festival.
July 2007 Storytelling with Taffy Thomas in his Grasmere garden.
August 2007 Storytelling with Taffy Thomas in his Grasmere garden.
August 2007 Staverly Carnival traditional stories.
September 2007 Youth Hostel Association storytelling for Coalport.
Septemebr 2007 Youth Hostel Association storytelling Stratford Upon Avon.
September 2007 Storytelling for the West Midlands consortium for Travelling Children.
October 2007 Grove Primary School Wolverhampton Traditional storytelling and workshops.
October 2007 Graisley Primary school Wolverhampton. Traditinal storytelling and workshops.
November 2007 Grove Primary School Wolverhampton Traditional storytelling and workshops.
December 2008 Storytelling with Peter Chand at the Newhampton Wolverhampton.
February 2008 Cambridgeshire library tour: Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts.
March 2008 Storytelling with Taffy Thomas in his Grasmere Garden.
March 2008 Storytelling in March Cambridge for the Straw Bear Festival.
April 2008 Youth Hostel association Stories and fire Coalport.
April 2008 Youth Hostel association Stories and fire Hawkshead.
April 2008 Youth Hostel association Stories and fire Grasmere.
April 2008 Youth Hostel association Stories and fire Stratford Upon Avon.
July 2008 Festival at the Edge storytelling and MCing.
August 2008 Wisbeach Events forum Stories for a summers day.
August 2008 Ludlow Street Festival.
September 2008 Picnic and Theatre in the Park Huntingdon: Two hour performance of stories and poems.
November 2008 Stockton upon Tees Stories for the under 5’s.
November 2008 Dad’s read best. A days workshops in giving dads the skills to read stories for their children. Funded by Wolverhampton council.
December 2008 Performances on Christmas day and boxing day with stories for Christmas and toured to 3 children’s homes a children’s ward and two older peoples care homes.
March 2009 Classic Tales Revisited Tour of Cambridge libraries.
April 2009 A series of workshops working with young people excluded from school. Re-Entry Wolverhampton.
July 2009 Festival at the Edge: Storytelling and poetry: including monologue for the Green Marquee on opening night.
August 2009 Stockton Upon Tees International Festival. Resident storyteller for one day.
October 2009 Kinersley Castle; Storytelling event.
November 2009 Stockton Upon Tees Children’s Book Festival.
Project 1
Working with a Find Your Talent Local Development Group. Offering storytelling workshops designed to enable a group of 12 young people the skills to speak to audiences on behalf of Find Your Talent.
The young people worked with me in the lead up to Londons Find Your Talent Shine event. Where they performed
live stories in front of an audience of five hundred young people.
Project 2
Workshops offered to young people in Wolverhampton who were excluded form school. This included a series
of writing workshops, then performance workshops finally resulting in public sharing of the work produced.
Cambridgeshire Libraries
Thank you for the opportunity to provide a reference for Andy Hawkins.
Andy first approached Cambridgeshire Libraries about three years ago asking if he could perform stories for children in the busy Central Library. We worked together on developing a programme based around stories by Roald Dahl. This proved so popular that Andy performed at a number of libraries throughout the county and received very enthusiastic reviews from children, parents and library staff. This was followed by a series of performances featuring extracts from classic children’s books [The Iron Man, Stig of the Dump, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Borrowers, The Wind in the Willows, Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events”]. Andy collected props and costumes to enliven the tellings and clearly spent much time practising the pieces. The audiences were delighted. Andy then performed a showcase of work from Hans Christian Anderson to mark his 200th Birthday, interweaving stories of Anderson in a very clever way, he produced an hour and half long show absolute spell binding magic Andy has a great rapport with his audience, regardless of their ages. He has a warm, friendly personality and really engages them. He is polite, punctual and well organised. He is also extremely self-critical and after every appearance he seeks the opinions of others. He likes to know what worked and what didn’t.
Andy’s true enthusiasm is for traditional tales and he has borrowed many collections from the library service. He has appeared at various libraries and community events in Cambridgeshire telling tales from around the world and is excellent. His love of stories really shines through.
I was particularly impressed earlier this year, when he was involved in a library promotion called “Park and Read”. Andy told stories to families on the top deck of a bus parked in the centre of Cambridge. Towards the end of the afternoon, a group of very lively teenagers climbed on board demanding a story. Andy calmly sat them down and
for a good fifteen minutes [and believe me, it was a very good fifteen minutes] he held them spellbound with a folk tale from Russia. They spontaneously applauded at the end and told him he was “cool”….praise indeed.
I can thoroughly recommend Andy Hawkins as a storyteller. Had he been available to work in Cambridgeshire this summer, we would have snapped him up. I hope you find this useful.
Community Development Co-ordinator, Re-Entry Low Hill
Andy Hawkins has worked as a storyteller and a creative writing teacher on our projects for the last three years working with young people who are excluded from school. He has always provided stimulating and interesting sessions, which are easy to apply to areas of the curriculum.
Andy supported us with our recent parent and tennant group. He delivered a self-confidence workshop which used story telling as tool of expression and as a way of parents communicating with children and young people. We had great feedback from parents and promptly booked him again for next years sessions.