Kate Davy - Sound Wizard

Kate Davy worked as a history teacher at Todmorden High School for two years before going on to work at two local West Yorkshire newspapers: in Dewsbury and Batley.

Kate as been at BBC Radio Leeds for seven years. Her radio experience includes reporting and producing programmes, as well as running radio skills workshops for community groups, especially refugees and asylum seekers in Leeds.

January 9th, 2008
I’m the lucky one on the project. That’s because I get a corner seat in lots of the workshops and see most of the artists in action. Before Christmas I was with Shonaleigh, visiting schools in Todmorden, Shade and Walsden, and saw her work with classes to conjure tales from thin air about trolls, changelings, muses, horses and husbands.
On one of my journeys into Todmorden by train it struck me how many layers of stories there are in this project. There are obviously the new stories Shonaleigh is creating with each class, but there’s also the story of how stories are created in the first place and how there’s a storyteller in all of us when we get going. Several children have told family stories – about why their parents chose their name, for example, or about their own favourite story books – and Shonaleigh has woven several local Todmorden tales into her original creations. So, I’ve heard stories about the Bridestones and Eagle Crag, about the men and women who worked on the Rochdale Canal and about how Shade got its name. At Castle Hill Primary I heard the story of Todmorden hero William Holt and his old horse.
At the heart of the project, there’s also the story of Todmorden itself, including its textile past, its position straddling the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, and the story of its magnificent landscape. And there are new stories being told all the time as groups of people settle in Todmorden and make it their home, and about what it means to be an outsider. Pupils have been telling stories about what they think about their town now and how they’d like it to be in the future. And, lastly, there’s our story of a team of outsiders coming into Todmorden to hold workshops in schools all about the power of art and words and storytelling.
My job is to capture some of these stories on tape – I think I’m going to be busy.

February 6th, 2008
Poetry is so noisy. When Craig Bradley gets into his stride in front of a class and hands out his drums, sunglasses, wigs, and fresh leeks (no kidding, there were three of them in action at Ferney Lee today) it’s like sitting in the brass section of an orchestra. Dancing, yelling and gasping are all part of his poetry jamboree – and it was the best morning’s entertainment I’ve had all year. And at the end of it all every single pupil in the class had written a poem. The great thing about Craig is that he likes you to say daft things, so for instance you could write a poem saying clouds are like lumps of Greek yoghurt bobbing around in the sky, and he’d say “Fantastic, absolutely fantastic”, and he’d get his bongo player to give you an appreciative drum-roll, and Gasping Girl to throw up her arms in wonder and delight. It’s very encouraging, and makes me wonder if I’ve a future in yoghurt poetry.
What a great class Miss Wilson has at Ferney Lee – and what a brave class. Everyone performed their poem to the class, even with me pointing a bright red microphone right in front of them, and everyone got a cheer at the end. You can hear the poems on Ferney Lee’s web page.

March 10th, 2008
Today was a trip back in time for me, back 13 years to when I last set foot in Tod High. I was a history teacher there for two years from 1993 to ‘95, my first ‘proper job’ – and it was one of those experiences, as they say, that makes a man of you. Yes, it’s certainly tough being a new teacher but it creates some great memories to enjoy a few years down the line, of pupils and fellow teachers and of lessons that didn’t go quite to plan, or, wondrously, sometimes did. I remember, for instance, the first time I met my new tutor group – 30 lovely and expectant faces all fresh from primary school looking up at me and my just wanting to say to them, “This is my first day too and I’m more nervous than you are and I really haven’t a clue what to do with you.” So it was with curiosity, a head full of memories and a slightly raised pulse that I went back through the gates to take part in a storytelling workshop with Pete Chand in Miss Barlow’s Year 7 English class.
My task was to record the stories that 10 of the pupils had rehearsed during the morning, so there were stories about the origins of dragons and the moon, about a Romanian princess who finds a river full of gold, about people with tails and a doctor who wasn’t quite as nice as he seemed. I take my hat off to all those pupils, performing their stuff with panache in front of a packed class. They certainly seemed to cope better than I did back in 1993.