Student storytelling: critical reflections on gender and intergenerational practice at the National Centre for Children’s Books

ABSTRACT

In a collaboration with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books, university students and primary school children were brought together through methods of intergenerational practice (IGP). Across consecutive academic years, the project has seen 136 students embark on an exploration of geographies of gender and generation with 120 primary school children. By utilising creative learning in teaching the project addresses threshold concepts in understanding, in this case, IGP (methods of intentional age integration). The purpose of this paper is to analyse the promotion of IGP through emergent critical reflections. These reflections are situated within academic debate on the use of IGP in children’s and young people’s geographies.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational practice
• gender
• children
• students
• storytelling

Introduction

This article bridges children’s geographies with critical reflections on pedagogic research, through an in-depth study of intentional intergenerational practice (IGP). Through a constructivist approach, I put forward child, adult and other age-based identities as dependent on social, cultural, political and economic conditions. I build on Vanderbeck and Worth’s (2015, 1–2) theorisations on intergenerational space and acknowledge that:

Spaces and places are not merely static arenas in which relationships between people transpire; rather they are both constituted by and constitutive of social relations, including relations of age and generation.

The ‘spaces and places’ which shape the focus of this article are within the walls of a seven storied former Victorian grain store (renovated to serve as the building we now know as the UK’s National Centre for Children’s Books), the exhibition space of the Great North Museum, as well as the more permeable boundaries of children’s stories. The relationships which run throughout this case study are intergenerational, though defining these intergenerational geographies can be difficult as there is some debate within the literature on what constitutes IGP.

Vanderbeck and Worth (2015, 6) state that ‘younger generations have much to teach older generations’; though go on to say that this is less well documented and recognised. Tarrant’s (2010) work on grandfathering and grandfatherhood is a notable exception. It is also important to note that extra-familial intergenerational geographies remain under researched despite Vanderbeck’s (2007, 209) statement from over a decade ago that: ‘comparatively little is known about where, when and how these relationships are formed and maintained’. Indeed this point is raised in Yarker’s (2021) recent commentary, which advocates for a new research agenda to extend the focus towards a greater consideration of everyday intergenerational encounters. Yarker is right to point out that intentional IGP has taken precedent in academic research over the ‘naturally occurring’ (2021, 1) instances in public space and elsewhere. Pain’s (2005) background paper for the Office of the Deputy Minister explains, for example, that IGP often takes the form of small yet intensive projects within particular settings. IGP is not a new concept and is historically linked to the structures of familial and patriarchal relationships (Hatton-Yeo and Ohsako 2000). Elements of IGP have existed for decades though it was not until the 1980s where it gained greater recognition for addressing social problems and issues. In deliberate moves towards more sustainable communities and social cohesion, it has become more mainstream; its embedding within British culture for example seen through television programmes such as Channel 4’s ‘Old People’s Homes for 4 Year Olds’.

The student storytelling project from which this paper draws was designed in accordance with Melville and Hatton-Yeo’s (2015, 61) ‘model for intergenerational shared spaces’ as part of final year undergraduate module on the Geography degree programme at Newcastle University (GEO3135: Geographies of Gender and Generation). Across two consecutive academic years, a total of 136 students were trained by creative practitioners from the National Centre for Children’s Books to lead storytelling events as part of the module, through three workshops (see Table 1).

Table 1. Workshop design.

Workshop 1 (held in the second week of teaching)	Research-led teaching, designed to explore the role of children’s literature in discussing big geographical ideas. This included discussions of academic literature, methodological approaches and ethical considerations.
Workshop 2 (held in the fourth week of teaching)	Designed to focus on delivery techniques. Students were trained by creative practitioners (Seven Stories staff) on ‘how to tell a story’.
Workshop 3 (held in the eighth week of teaching)	This third workshop played host to our intergenerational practice events. These took place off campus at the Seven Stories site in 2017 and in the Great North Museum in 2018.

Academically, through lectures and workshops, students studied the ways in which age integration is used to respond to the ‘problem’ of age segregated spaces through the intentional bringing together of people of different ages (Richardson 2016. “under us all: ‘what you've been through is what we've all been through'.” in masculinity in crisis: depictions of modern male trauma in ireland, edited by c. rees, 85-101, 618). These interventions, like other forms of IGP, sought to bring together older and younger people to enrich intergenerational relations. Yet unlike other forms of IGP, the gaps in age within this student storytelling project are much smaller.

It is here that this article makes a key contribution to the literature. As a result two key outcomes emerged. Firstly, both students and school children learned to collaborate, listen to, share and support one another. Secondly, all participants developed engagement, confidence and capacity in discussing big geographical ideas. The emergent analysis of this was gathered through feedback sessions and anonymous online tools which I facilitated with the students; with the school teachers generating feedback with their pupils on my behalf. School feedback was gathered via a post event discussion which the teachers facilitated in class with the children and was shared with myself and staff at Seven Stories by way of a debriefing session. This evaluation involved critical reflection of the project as well as identification of future needs. The discussion within this article is therefore missing the crucial voices of the children themselves, which is a stark omission, especially within this journal of Children’s Geographies. As will become clearer within the methodological section of this article, this research was constrained by the parameters of a single semester teaching format. This presented restrictions on time and inhibited both relationship building with children and longitudinal analysis of the work’s benefits.

Methodological approach

This project worked with subsequent generations of young people (final year undergraduate students [20–21 years old] and primary school children [9–10 years old]). Its conception was driven in part by the work of Hopkins and Pain and their statement that ‘geographers have still to break out of the tradition of fetishing the margins and ignoring the centre’ (2007, 287). A criticism of earlier IGP work is in its careless use of terminology and its weak theoretical underpinnings (Melville and Hatton-Yeo 2015). Acutely aware of these critiques, the ‘generational’ nature of this project warrants further consideration. This is especially significant given recent challenges put forward by Roberts and France (2020) on the ubiquity of generational framings within youth research. Interestingly, Valentine (2019, 28) explains the somewhat opaque generational perspectives in geography through a lack of sub-disciplinary clarity:

The development of intergenerational geographies has led thinking about youth to be absorbed into wider framings of age, or geographies of family life.

Using IGP as method, this project more closely aligns the socio-chronological margins and addresses geographies of childhood and youth through a unique collaboration. For precision, it is one which demands different methodological consideration, empirical observation and research evaluation. In outlining my methodological approach, it is important to reiterate that this article has not been able to directly account for the experiences of the children involved. Rather its purpose is to contribute to children’s geographies and through extra-familial IGP champion greater student involvement in children’s lives. Holloway, Holte, and Mills (2018) helpfully present a nuanced articulation of children’s agency where they explain the capacity, subjectivity, spatiality and temporality that have too often been overlooked by those involved with the geographies of children, youth and families. This project was however driven by classroom innovation and the writing of this article as a commentary on reflexive geographical teaching. There was desire from the National Centre for Children’s Books, local primary school teachers and myself to explore big geographical ideas through children’s books. With the support of the Geography, Politics and Sociology School Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Fund, I was able to support this interest and helped to generate workshop materials in collaboration with Rachel Pattinson (Vital North Partnership Manager¹), Jayne Humphreys (Learning and Participation Coordinator, Seven Stories) and Beth Coverdale (Creative Producer – Practice and Programmes, Seven Stories). Furthermore, we consulted with teachers at two separate primary schools. Ultimately, it was a project designed for, unfortunately not with, children.

In analysing my methodological approaches, the words of Newman and Hatton-Yeo (2008, 31) seem appropriate. They provide a rationale for intergenerational learning by stating: ‘preparing younger individuals for life in the modern, more complex world has become a function of wider social groups that are “non-familial”’. Through this student storytelling we developed an ‘extra-familial’ model. Elsewhere, familial pressures have been seen in ludic geographies with them dominated by a securitisation discourse which, by contrast, further reifies children’s books as a ‘safe space’. I note Birch’s (2018) caution with regards to claims such as these; in citing the work of Cave (2010) and Fincher and Iveson (2008) she offers nuanced analysis of claims to safety within adult-centric space more broadly. In many ways of course, these spaces are never formed, rather they sit as intangible geographical imaginaries. Indeed through this extra-familial learning, it has been a pleasure to be part of what Bavidge (2006) named ‘privileged space’: the spaces of adult and child dialogue. While evaluating the sustainability of the project outcomes remains a priority – I will never be able to measure the reciprocity and empowerment generated through this project, especially without the direct input of the children themselves. Instead, I point to the words of the children’s teachers:

The excitement of getting the ‘big bus’ to the museum and working with the students was a brilliant way to hook all the children into learning. It was a vulnerable child who asked if we could do it again next week. I know that this particular child got a lot out of working with young adults in higher education. I firmly believe that such exchanges can impact positively on aspirations especially when in a memorable setting and different to the norm. (Primary School Teacher)

This feedback from one of the school teachers helps build on some of the arguments raised in Birch’s (2018, 516) earlier work within this journal. While traditional engagement with children has seen them as ‘learners’, Birch rightly points out that they are also ‘experiencers and players’. Of particular note in this teacher’s reflection therefore is that the child’s social development is as important as the learning experience itself.

Reading as intergenerational practice

Earlier research from Australia reiterates the need to read through the significance of reading as a site of intergenerational contact; as well as a sense of loss (Merga 2017). The research shows that once children have learned to read by themselves, most parents often stop reading with children altogether. It is here that the student storytelling project is positioned. While I am critical of the narrow use of parental influence, research from Scholastic (2014) is indicative of wider themes identified by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD 2000):

Students who have better educated parents in better jobs, and who have books and other resources in their homes have more chances of coming to school more engaged in reading.

The report later qualifies that not all engaged readers come from privileged homes and notes significantly, that engaged readers from poorer backgrounds consistently outperform less engaged readers from more privileged homes. This led to their ultimate conclusion that reading enjoyment was proved more important for children’s educational success, than family socio-economic background. What they then call for is greater recognition for the role of schools and wider communities to create positive reading environments. It is here that I feel student involvement is best placed. Through a longitudinal study the Institute of Education confirmed that: those that read for pleasure regularly aged 10 and 16 gained higher results in maths, vocabulary and spelling. Furthermore, reading for pleasure was found to be more significant for children’s cognitive development between the ages 10 and 16 than their parent’s level of education (IOE 2013). Scholastic (2014) surveyed across different age ranges (6–8; 9–11; 12–14 and 15–17 years old), and on average across all groups 83% stated they loved – or liked a lot – being read books aloud at home. The top reason cited was ‘it’s a special time with parents’. The familial framing of this work is again emphasised in the research. When presenting this through the teaching of my module, while many recognised – and benefited from – such childhood experiences themselves, this was not universally accepted within the student cohort. Through the use of an anonymous feedback tool, for example, one student wrote that:

[The storytelling project] assumed that we had all had this positive, homogenous, middle class childhood where our parents had read to us … not all of us had. I love reading now but I was never really read to by my parents.

(3rd year undergraduate student)

Inspired by this response, this article presents critical reflections on this form of IGP. It is also important to reiterate that research indicates the importance of positive reading environments and that these can be created outside the home and outside the family network. Moving beyond the ‘need to read’ from the child developmental perspective and part of wider analysis that has been described as the neoliberal policing of parents and families (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014; Nayak and Kehily 2014), we can articulate the importance of storytelling to geographical imaginations. Like Dickens and McDonald (2015, 82; and before them, Cameron [2012]; Daniels and Lorimer [2012]) this project ‘follows the recent effort by geographers to recuperate storytelling and narrative as way of connecting disciplinary boundaries and conceptual concerns’.

Access to books has become more politicised in an era of public library closures (Hitchen 2019) its relevance to people’s lives has been reaffirmed in these times of global crisis. The intentional age-integration of university students with primary school pupils brings about a meaningful encounter across difference and with the intention of creating positive extra-familial reading environments. This article posits that the world of books is inherent to childhood socialisation, and asks for them to be considered alongside studies elsewhere which have reinforced the importance of play more generally. Play is a space of, and for, childhood engagement and where:

They play with the environmental affordances (such as playgrounds and open spaces, but also kerbs, car parks, walls and so on), and move between their homes and those of their friends. (Stenning 2017: Online)

What is particularly interesting to note is that this familiarity is shaped by a familiality. Stenning goes on to ask if this is merely through convenience (questioning if it is simply easier to play with – and near – those we are related to) or something more nuanced (more affective responses and issues of security). Stenning’s position regarding play as essential was reaffirmed through a briefing paper written with Russell (2020) in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic:

It is fundamental to children’s wellbeing, resilience, and development; and it is mostly how they exercise. In their play, children take aspects of their everyday life and turn them upside down to create new worlds that are less boring (being isolated indoors) or less scary (the fear and uncertainty of the virus). This is more than indulgence; it is the basis of well-being and resilience.

What this serves to prove is the major role of play within family geographies and everyday lives. Yet it also helps identify the contributions that storytelling can – and does – make. It is through the transcendence that made available through books where we again see the potential for enhanced geographical understandings; in following Stenning and Russell’s framing – challenging boredom and dispelling fear. Books – and the stories within them – offer an open-door policy which can promote mobility and enrichment; yet they face the class-based critiques that have challenged other forms of play and extra-curricular activities (Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson 2014). Furthermore, I take note of Bavidge’s (2006, 320) cautionary tales and her citation of Philo’s (2003, 17) earlier warning, that the writers of children’s stories can be seen to be ‘too easily encapsulating children’s worlds’. Bavidge goes on to clarify instead that:

Literary children’s geography has to start from the basic point that children’s literature does not, of course, represent a child’s view of the world at all. What it does represent is a privileged space in which we witness the operations of adult dialogues with children.

From the project’s inception generational experience was paramount, a sociological concept ‘that sets lives in historical context’ (Brannen 2014, 485) and for the project to work, the university students needed to remember their own reading experiences. Like Nayak and Kehily (2013, 61) I believed that:

As a method for understanding gender and generation, memories become markers in the soundtrack of a life, paying attention to the work feelings do in moments of biographical and narrativized time and space.

Indeed by following the constructivist tradition, questions of memories of children’s books were the first areas we ‘workshopped’. Nayak and Kehily (2013, 61) go on to say that the practice of memory work reveals a rich quality of intergenerational dialogue, ‘that may be transmitted psycho-socially through experience and emotion, not necessarily spoken but known through the scar tissue of familial relations’ (original emphasis). The focus in the workshops was inherently geographical and when asked about what reading meant to our students in the first session, four words were quickly shouted out from the crowd: ‘together’, ‘happy’, ‘comfort’ and ‘special’ (notes from workshop 1: 13/10/17). What made these words significant was, as their context was explained, they all related to memories of reading as a child – not as young adults. They were not especially related to what they remembered reading, but rather where they remembered reading and who they remembered reading with. Immediately then, intergenerational space was being demarcated: the chair they sat on, the family home they were in and the strong relationships running throughout. In bringing together students and school pupils however, it was hoped to create positive reading environments outside of family homes and school settings, as advocated for in earlier work.

A key finding from this research therefore were the ways in which psycho-social transmission emerged through these extra-familial relations. This work has a longer history in urban education programmes, such as Parker’s work in Manhattan (1989) and in social gerontological work such as that of Isaki and Towle Harmon (2015). Despite the project’s innovation within IGP, I am not the first to draw on the transformative potential of children’s literature within geography: Matthews (2009) researched disabled representations in children’s stories; Bavidge (2006) worked on locating the city within children’s literature; and Sweeney (2016) looked at themes of adoption in children’s texts. Through student storytelling we see new potential however. Due to the preceding workshops, students were encouraged to remember and re-engage with their own childhoods. Something many of them stated they felt disconnected from. The workshops offered periods of introspection, as well as an upskilling as readers and creative practitioners. This is where the professional training delivered by Seven Stories staff was essential.

In echoing the familial framing of lots of other IGP work, many of the students reflected on how their relationship with the children developed into a sibling like dynamic. My observations certainly bore this out also, with children treating myself and their teachers differently to the students themselves (Hackett 2016). The students appeared to develop an older sibling/role model type position, drawn on assumed similarity based upon physiological age (Pain 2001). Where social age (Pain 2001) was concerned, as fellow learners the students maintained a more passive role in the overall running of the event, meaning at times they appeared to lack control and confidence. The way the students were encouraged to sit in circles on the floor by the creative practitioners seemed to help the students reconnect with their childhood classroom experiences. Students were simultaneously overly excited and especially attentive. They were eager to learn but easily distracted. According to the teachers’ observations, they were just like primary school children. Ultimately, running throughout the IGP events were notions of power, social and cultural capital. This was more nuanced than a simple binary of generational experience as it varied between schools as well as within the students, which helps contribute to more diverse generational framings as called for by Roberts and France (2020).

These relationships were unequal. One school had a stronger institutional relationship with the university, meaning that their children had greater exposure to the campus buildings and museum spaces which led to a more embodied confidence. There was clearly more hesitance from the school children who had less familiarity with their settings. It was noticeable that there was great variation in confidence within the student cohort also. This became more pronounced as within each storytelling group (of around seven or eight students) there were typically only two or three who took on a leading reading role. These students often made the case for putting themselves forward based on their future career plans as teachers, social and youth workers as well as those who had extra-curricular experience as sports coaches, babysitters and the like. All of these storytellers saw this role (at least in some capacity) in terms of working experience.

Storytelling as feminist intervention

The very nature of IGP involves planned activities which are deliberate and for a purpose. With this in mind, the learning outcomes of the module saw the students learning that boys’ educational experiences are typically narrower and less focussed than girls’ and tend to neglect engagement with personal development (Baker et al. 2004). They had debated the – over-emphasised – crisis in masculinity (Richardson and Lawrence 2016. “under us all: 'what you've been through is what we've all been through'.” in masculinity in crisis: depictions of modern male trauma in ireland, edited by c. rees, 85-101) and as a corollary, they had been introduced to the Let Toys Be Toys campaign.² The pervasive damage caused by gendered play was a keystone to this work, and along with the empowerment of young women and girls, saw the promotion of emotional intelligence among young men and boys. The foundations were set for using IGP as a form of feminist intervention.

Then UK Children’s Laureate (2017–2019), Lauren Child, on announcement of her new role, stated:

I don’t know if it’s just in our culture, or whether it’s a boy thing, that they find it very hard to pick up a book or go to a film if a girl is the central character. I don’t know where that comes from but it worries me because it makes it harder for girls to be equal. (BBC 2017: Online)

There are important cultural differences and the intergenerational work of Evans (2015) is testament to this. Indeed students were introduced to ideas such as these through their teaching too, with the module covering campaigns such as No Means No (2017). The global and pervasive problem of gender was well established.

During the first year of the teaching collaboration with Seven Stories students worked with five key texts. These books were selected following consultation with Seven Stories staff regarding books that put forward particularly progressive attitudes to gender (given the focus of the module). These books all adopted an inclusive and intersectional attitude to gender as a social construction:

1. Introducing Teddy (Walton 2016) documents a transgender story. A boy teddy bear, who wears a bow-tie, has a close relationship with a little boy (his human). They do everything together and have lots of fun. That is until one day, when the boy notices the teddy bear is sad. The teddy bear confides in his human and explains that he really wants to be a girl teddy bear, named Tilly. Through the illustrations we see that Tilly, now wears the bow-tie as a bow in her hair. The key message within the story is that while the teddy bear has changed her identity, she has the same relationship with the little boy, post transition.

2. Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World (Pankhurst 2016) was written by Kate Pankhurst, a descendant of Emmeline Pankhurst (British political activist and leader of the Suffragette Movement) – who features in the book. Despite this important connection and despite the vast majority of enrolled students being young women, this was the least popular choice of book. Only three students selected to read the story to the school pupils.

3. Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too) (Negley 2015) was, by contrast, far the most popular text among the students. It documents the experiences of superheroes, wrestlers, astronauts and cowboys while also featuring images of father-son relationships through the use of visual imagery. The promotion of more positive masculinities particularly resonated with the students.

4. Dogs Don’t Do Ballet (Kemp 2010) with the anthropomorphic quality to the story – a ballet dancing dog – the reader is able to project different identities into the narrative precisely because the reader’s focus is on a dog. Had the character been human, boy or girl, the reader would have greater preconceived ideas and situated knowledge. There is a strong intergenerational dynamic in this story.

5. Izzy Gismo (Jones 2017) is a young black girl who dreams of being an inventor. She is able to make her dreams a reality through a close relationship with her grandfather. He provides her with tools and she is encouraged to hone her practical skills at every opportunity as well as learning the value of resilience and perseverance for when things go wrong.

The students’ selections of which book to work with may be reflective of a greater ease in talking about the ‘other’ rather than confronting that which is more intimate and personal. It could perhaps also be stated that the students are guilty of their own gender bias. The following vignettes offer critical reflections on storytelling and IGP as a creative teaching practice. The first of which considers the composition of the module itself and questions the role of IGP in knowledge exchange. The second gives insight into what the books themselves had to offer and asks whether we can consider them as safe spaces?

Gender bias and subverting expertise

Student storytelling had only 8 male students in its first year out of a total of 55, meaning they were less than 15% of the module. The year after there were twice as many (16 male students) but the module had increased as a whole meaning that out of 81 students the number was still less than 20%. By way of comparison Geography as a subject at Newcastle ran at an average of 38% male students across the preceding five years (2014–2019). Students are acutely self-aware of such gendering of the discipline, and this is epitomised by one of the students’ reflections:

I feel more of the content should be introduced in first/second year in order to increase the number of people who want to take it. I feel some people were interested in the module when shown the outline when selecting modules but it seemed a bit of a ‘curve ball’ or risky choice for those not really engaged in feminism and gender studies.

(3rd year undergraduate student)

The module the anti-sexist men’s movement of the 1980s with an aim of student storytelling to create non-gendered, non-hierarchical collaborative play. Gender bias is a cause of gender inequality and we know it exists within student cohorts (Boring, Ottoboni, and Stark 2016). It makes it very difficult to challenge the injustice that sexism and other forms of oppression produce. As a self-selecting optional module, there are therefore limits to the transformative potential of the project. Significantly, student involvement in IGP, by design and by participation, led some of the students to forget the value of IGP and focus their student storytelling activity too narrowly – assuming a one-directional transfer of knowledge. The following statement helps us better understand who can be an ‘expert’ in these encounters:

I’m not sure our intergenerational practice project worked. The children seemed to already know what we were trying to tell them and, if anything, we learned more from them.

(3rd year undergraduate student)

By working with IGP as a research method, expertise has been allowed to flow back and forth between children, students and teachers. This student’s evaluation actually resonates with the core of IGP work, that the very coming together across age boundaries brings greater understanding and cohesion. Yet, because of the institutional framing of the activity, this student was expecting to be educating the children through a hierarchy of knowledge.

Books as safe spaces?

In contradictory ways, the fictional stories function as ‘safe spaces’ to express feelings and broach sensitive subjects with strangers. In Mary Ann Hunter’s words (2008, 7), the term safe space is ‘often used but rarely analysed’. I wish to rectify this here and cite earlier work which asks important questions for such analysis: ‘It is important to interrogate exactly what safe space might constitute, who might have the power to define a space as safe and what they may hope to achieve in doing so’ (Richardson and Lawrence 2016. “intergenerational space.” children's geographies 14 (5): 617-619, 87). For some students, the activities offered opportunities to embrace risk. The primary purpose of reading each of the stories took the form of IGP by encouraging discussions of gender and its different conceptualisations:

[The book] is something which takes people away from what they know and what they consider to be their ‘comfort zone’ to allow room for broader identity exploration, as it is telling children they can be who they want to be, not what society tells them they have to be, thus tackling the gender issues and stereotypes within the generations of the future. It is also a very relevant issue in society at the moment and something I am deeply interested in.

(3rd year undergraduate student)

I was speaking to my grandparents about this book and they were quite shocked. They’re very liberal people and they understood after I explained to them. When they were growing up homosexuality was the taboo that society was starting to challenge; whereas for me, it’s transgender.

(3rd year undergraduate student)

This speaks to the potential – and dangers – of books and storytelling to explore big ideas. To demonstrate this further, I reflect on a particular reading of Introducing Teddy, where the students and school pupils discussed things more informally in smaller groups. It was at this moment where two school pupils pointed to one of their peers across the room and challenged the students to identify the gender of this child. Upon observing the exchange I heard the students nervously respond. They stated they could see the pupil in question who was ‘dressed like a boy’ and looked ‘androgynous’. The pupils smiled and responded that this was ‘wrong’ and that their classmate was in fact a girl. Unsettled by this conversation, which seemed to be outing a trans child, I sought out the teachers for their guidance. Upon speaking with them about this they informed me that their school was proud of its gender inclusive environment and that the children often had open conversations about gender identity, including with their classmates. The teachers reminded me of the fact that I had met with the children beforehand to explain their role in participating in exploring these big geographical ideas with my students. Consent was granted for each of the children and students involved. What is significant from this example however are the ways in which the apparent safety of children’s fictional story books were rendered risky in the real-world context.

This example also supports what Hall’s (2021, 57) earlier work had revealed (through investigating how sexualities were talked about in English primary schools), especially in the decisions to depict non-heterosexual and gender diverse life as ‘just like’ others. Doing so risks ‘disavowing lives that do not look like this idealised hetero-monogamous nuclear family’ (Youdell 2011, 67 as cited in Hall 2021, 57). While it is of course important to state that the student responses were given in a context of studying for a module titled Geographies of Gender and Generation, it does give insight to the power of the books in opening up conversations about topics which the students themselves found challenging. It was also revealing as to how aware the children were of gender based identities and how well versed they were (albeit insensitively so) in having such conversations.

Conclusion

While it has been noted elsewhere that the critiques of IGP lie in its vague grasp of concepts and definitions – it has been argued that these can be overcome with transparent communication and participatory approaches (Pain 2005). Certainly, in doing so, the chances of more harmonious group interaction and more sustainable outcomes were increased. Pain (2005, 24) noted earlier that ‘in most cases, the actual nature of the activity is of secondary importance to the benefits which are perceived to arise from the interaction itself’. In this case, the actual practice of doing IGP led to the following benefits: (1) young people learned to collaborate, listen to, share and support one another as both students and school children; and (2) these same students and school children developed engagement, confidence and capacity in discussing big geographical ideas. While difficult to quantify, ongoing relationships between the university, Seven Stories and local schools represent a successful project. Several of the students enrolled on this module have gone on to teaching careers as well as elsewhere in the education and care sectors; it is too early to ascertain the longer term impacts this work has had for the school children involved.

Ultimately, books – and the stories within – form a crucial part of the creative and cultural capital of our children, families, communities and societies. Undoubtedly reading is an intimate source of childhood socialisation and intergenerational space. The books we read and share are important to the way we understand who we are. So in countering the class-based critiques of reading as an exclusive or privileged form of play, including from within the student cohort, it is the questions of who is doing the reading and listening and where the reading and listening is taking place that matter most to this analysis. By testing these student storytelling projects against the aims and objectives of both the teaching and research, the practice of doing IGP proves most important. The design of the events were set up to encourage shared learning in line with academic teachings and learning outcomes, but it was the ways in which students and school children demonstrated increased confidence and collaboration alongside knowledge exchange that was most encouraging. Through emergent and critical reflections this article has revealed some key considerations for IGP. Firstly, and most significantly, unlike most other projects this work brought two groups together that are much more closely aligned than is typically considered within IGP. As has been summarised, the outcomes (of shared learning and wider social benefits) were met and are common across IGP work, but by bringing together students and school children newer challenges and opportunities were opened up. Advocates of IGP purport that the purpose of activities are often secondary to the overall outcomes, and on reflection this is also true of this student storytelling project.

While its design as part of a wider undergraduate module on the geographies of gender and generation created a specific form of IGP – the coupling of my vignettes with critical reflections highlight the limits of this. Firstly, the gender bias of the student cohort had a direct effect on the school children. They were not used to such imbalance and it led many of them to ask questions of ‘where were all the boys?’ While the recognition of strong female role models was a strength of the project helping with the empowerment of young women and girls, there was a dearth in finding such representation for the young boys involved. While students were encouraged to tackle these issues directly with the children, it meant the promotion of emotional intelligence of young men and boys via male role models was limited. Secondly, the subversion of expertise was a more widely felt benefit of the project. Some students found this disconcerting initially, but it led to greater introspection, which made them more socially aware and helped them contextualise their own individual and generational experiences. Thirdly, while the notion of safe spaces has been debated elsewhere – the transformative potential offered through this student storytelling activity, enabled students to explore big ideas with school children in a way that they would find much more difficult without the books as stimuli. Overall, student storytelling as IGP has given insight to the adult–child dialogue so cherished in the work of Bavidge (2006). Furthermore, it has helped develop understandings of the extra-familial intergenerational geographies which have to date, remained under researched.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Geography, Politics and Sociology School Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Fund at Newcastle University.

Notes

1 The Vital North Partnership is a strategic partnership between Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books and Newcastle University, funded by Arts Council England and Newcastle University.

2 In the second workshop, I had arranged for a visit from the MP for Newcastle Central, Chi Onwurah. In her role as Shadow Minister for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – and as a former engineer – Chi spoke with the university students about the gendered workplace.