“Storycase: play your narrative trip!” is a learning innovation tool created by Gianluca Vagnarelli, i-strategies founder, to develop students’ storytelling skills.
“Storycase” is a vintage luggage, full of travel stickers – to evoke the idea of the journey – containing selected storytelling table games like Story Cubes, Rhetoric. The Public Speaking Game, Storymatic and many others.
Since the Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem, the journey metaphor has been used several times in human history to describe the storytelling experience. For example, in Vladimir Propp’s classic study about the essential structural elements of a tale, the narrative functions are explained along a journey pathway which develops from the hero’s departure to his return. Following the same approach, Storycase invites students to start their narrative journey by practising storytelling skills and having fun.
Students, divided into small groups, start playing a table game of their choice. After practising it, they rotate the games so each group will train storytelling skills using different table games. Storycase mainly focuses on developing three transversal skills: 1) creativity as the capacity to use imagination to create stories; 2) narrative skills as the way to connect different story “pieces” in a unique sequence that makes sense and 3) communication skills as the capacity to tell a story orally.
Storycase is based on the European Skill-Set framework for Storytelling skills that i-strategies developed as scientific coordinator in the EU project Storylines.