On behalf of the Brimstone Award Committee, we would like to announce the winners of the 2006 Brimstone Award!  While the initial intention was to provide a grant for only one project, a special award is being made this year to three additional applicants for $3,000 each because of the extraordinary merit of these projects.

Recipient:

Gert Johnson - $5,000.00

Project Title: “Children at the Well; Learning to Draw From the Wisdom of Faith Traditions in an Interfaith, Intergenerational Storytelling Venture"

Brief Synopsis: The intent of 'Children at the Well' is to deepen the experience of our story circle and be of service to our broader community to promote interfaith peace and understanding in an intergenerational context. We envision it as an ongoing program serving as a positive and lasting model for other storytelling and interfaith groups. 

From a variety of religious education programs (Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Hindu) we will gather 8 to 10 young people who have demonstrated a high degree of interest in storytelling. Professional storytellers will work with them, instructing in storytelling technique and developing each young person's story from their own tradition to tell at a performance. Sensitive listening to the stories of others will be stressed.

The young people from the various religious education programs will tell their prepared stories at a performance which will be followed by a multicultural pot-luck supper and a story sharing for all using story prompts. This even, which will be open to the public, will provide an enjoyable goal for the young people involved. It will connect people of diverse faiths and cultures, and introduce them to the humanitarian possibilities of storytelling through the youth.

Our documentation of the following will be used to compile a Children at the Well kit- a valuable resource of “how-to’s”.  We have decided to provide this kit in the form of a pdf file, to post on interfaithstory.org for free perusal and printing for all who are interested.  We will bind several ‘hard’ copies for local use.

The kits will include:

• Our approach to schools and/or religious education programs, and other supporting organizations
• Our methods for recruiting and selecting youth tellers
• The agenda for the initial sharing with the tellers
• Materials used for the story coaching
• Ongoing teacher/student responses to the process.  Each coaching session will end with a brief written evaluation and discussion period.
• The outline and materials (handouts, resources, etc.) used in teacher presentations
• What goes into planning and executing the performance and pot-luck supper, including how we solicit an audience by way of media and community organizations
• The format and results of the pre- and post- survey given to students, and a summary of the pot-luck supper comment sheets
• Our insights into our accomplishments, and the difficulties we encountered in the project
• Handouts of tips and resources for other storytelling and interfaith groups who might wish to replicate or adapt parts of the program

Additional Recipients: 

Ellen Munds - $3,000.00 

Project Title: "Using Storytelling as an Educational Tool"

Brief Synopsis: This project "Using Storytelling as an Educational Tool" will expand the services of Storytelling Arts of Indiana. This project naturally grew out of our work with the teachers and students attending the Annual Hoosier Storytelling Festival. Visit www.storytellingarts.org to review the Teacher's Guide prepared each year for the festival. Storytelling Arts of Indiana will: A. Develop storytelling tools for teachers to use in aligning classroom instruction and assessment to the Indiana's Academic Standards for the primary grades in language arts. B. Produce electronic guides of the storytelling tools for each primary grade level. C. Develop a workshop for teachers in the art and use of storytelling in the classroom. D. Market the workshop and electronic guides to the various school systems in the state. The initial year of the project will reach approximately 30 teachers (test run of the workshop). Once the materials are designed, the number of individuals reached will depend on the number of workshops offered each year around the state. The beauty of this project is that once the materials are designed, the workshop may be offered unlimited times to an unlimited number of teachers.

Kevin Strauss - $3,000.00

Project Title: "Environmental Storytelling for Schools and Nature Centers

Brief Synopsis:  This project has four components: 1. Using an existing definition of an "environmental story" I will work with out storytellers to compile a list of effective stories that teach about the natural world and provide lessons about caring for our environment. This list will be used in the later educational portions of the project. 2. Develop a demonstration model of how to develop new environmental stories from natural history events or environmental issues. 3. Develop a training manual that will help naturalists and science teachers use more storytelling in their work. 4. Train environmental educators and teachers to more effectively tell stories in the classroom through conference presentations.