Aims of the Archive

To create at Anglia Ruskin University an archive of subtitled digital films of oral storytelling drawn from a wide range of European languages and cultural traditions - and to include new, emerging and 'hybridised' traditions (for example, British/Asian; German/Turkish; Urban Hip Hop Storytelling etc).

To preserve not only the texts of the stories, but also the non-verbal narrative and performance techniques of a wide range of story tellers, for the study of scholars, and for the practical use of teachers and others to encourage pupils and students to tell and record their own stories and to give them the opportunity to contribute to the archive.

To develop with our partners software tools through which school pupils and students in further and higher education will be able to create their own digital stories using computer technology and social media as a contemporary analogue of oral transmission. To create a virtual environment for communication and self-initiated and peer-supported creative learning - an online European Story Map - through which these contributions can be shared and can stimulate and encourage further storytelling.

To collaborate with a range of private and public sector partners across Europe to collect, record and preserve this fragile and precious resource, and to develop new techniques and tools to maintain and extend the creative and communications skills represented by oral storytelling for a new generation of children and young people.

To create and consolidate partnerships with other European institutions of higher education, and with private sector partners with specific and complimentary skills that could benefit a range of research and curriculum development, with other institutions and archives - principally the National Poetry Archive and Society for Storytelling.

Encourage cross-faculty and cross-disciplinary research, particularly in the field of the study of the cultures and literatures of childhood and their foundations in folklore and oral storytelling.