Story Kitchen

The Story Kitchen project, led by Seven Stories, worked in partnership with community organisations in Byker to provide out-of-school creative opportunities for families to participate in children’s book-inspired activity, using food as a theme.

Since February 2022, children and adults have enjoyed sharing stories, creative activities, cooking and eating together.

Seven Stories worked with Nourish Food School to deliver the Story Kitchen project, which responded to specific identified needs, including:

• Ward priorities to support school readiness and reduce social isolation (which had been exacerbated by Covid-19) by bringing people together to share stories, food and activities to support community cohesion;
• The need to provide activities and food for families in school holidays (identified by local schools and consultation with families); and
• Young people’s enjoyment of gaining new cooking skills (Byker’s Best Summer Ever consultation).

There were four cooking sessions for this round of the Story Kitchen. The first two sessions were held at Heaton Baptist Church and the last two in the Seven Stories Café, followed up with a celebratory event to which all of the families who had taken part were invited.

An example session 

The session’s chosen book was ‘The Good Egg’ which is about a very stressed egg, and the importance of accepting yourself and others just the way they are. The craft was to create an egg character, and the group also made frittata together in the kitchen.

In another session, the families made ‘rainbow pasta’ together, with the aim of encouraging particpating children to eat as many colours as they could. The session was based on the children’s book ‘The Little Green Donkey’ which is all about eating too much one thing and it not being good for you!

Impact

We improved health and wellbeing through arts and cultural activities, and explored stories that looked at sharing culture through food, fussy-eating and patience. We increased confidence in reading and sharing books; participating families shared books together and talked about the narratives and characters throughout, and children used critical thinking and shared thoughts and ideas with their adults.

The group increased vocabulary, with titles featuring international foods and cultures, and the sessions brought families together from the Byker and Ouseburn areas of Newcastle.