Family Learning conference: Story Power
Call for papers - deadline Monday 17 March 2025.
Conference date: Thursday, 3 July 2025, in person, London, 10am - 4pm
The Mercers’ Company | Mercers’ Hall | Ironmonger Lane | London | EC2V 8HE
Stories make us human. We need stories to make sense of our experiences, to grow our understanding of others and their experiences, and to learn and imagine new ways of doing things and problem-solve. Stories, storytelling and reading are a yellow brick road to personal and collective growth and learning.
Campaign for Learning invites writers, storytellers, poets, artists, cultural practitioners, community educators, researchers and anyone working to understand more about the interplay between storytelling and learning to submit a proposal for our conference in summer 2025.
In this full-day, in-person conference, we will look at the diverse benefits of storytelling, sharing stories and reading and how these can inform and enrich family learning practice, activities and programmes.
We are taking submissions for 20-minute presentations or longer workshops that address themes such as:
- boosting well-being and relationships by reading together for pleasure
- optimising learning and engagement by reading together
- learning maths, science or other subjects through storytelling
- diffusing difficult situations or talking about challenging topics through storytelling and/or comedy
- dialogic learning and co-creating stories
- using props and multisensory resources in story building
- identity and culture formation
- fake news, propaganda and social media
- what do stories do: storytelling and cognition
We are also interested to hear from storytellers, performance poets and other creative practitioners to help delegates experience the magic of storytelling and story co-creation first-hand on the day.
Who will be attending the conference?
This conference is for family learning professionals and colleagues working with families to support learning including those who work in:
- Adult and community education
- Arts organisations
- Charities
- Early years
- Universities
- Further education
- Health settings
- Heritage venues
- Libraries
- Local authorities
- Museums and galleries
- Schools
All selected contributors on the conference programme will have a free conference place, and reasonable expenses reimbursed if required.
We are unlikely to be able to programme all submissions alongside invited speakers. However, we may be interested in sharing your work in an alternative format, such as a video or resource to be shared with delegates, if we are unable to offer you a slot in the programme. We can offer a conference place discount if you have submitted a proposal and we want to share your work, but were not selected for the conference day.
You will be notified by Monday, 24 March 2025 if your submission has been successful or not.
The deadline for submissions is Monday, 17 March 2025 noon. We accept proposals in all formats: Word, PdF, video, etc.
How to submit your proposal
Upload your proposal via this link
Timeline
- Thursday 13 February Call for papers launch
- Monday 17 March noon Submission deadline
- Monday 24 March Notification of selection
- Thursday 3 July Conference
If you have questions, please contact Miranda Baxter on [email protected]
Campaign for Learning thanks The Mercer’s Company for their generosity in support of this family learning conference.