By Ant Sutcliffe, Associate Director Higher Horizons, Keele University. This article first appeared as a Personally Speaking column in the Stoke Sentinel in September, 2024.

Here in the Potteries, like other proud working-class areas across the country, storytelling has always been an important part of our culture. My grandad, a miner who struggled to write, was a chief storyteller. Whether it be in Scrimmies on Smallthorne Bank, or around the coal fire in the back room, he always had a tale to tell.

One favourite was about how my nan’s family were the unluckiest in the world. He would make a case that being ‘Smiths’, and from Well Street, Hanley, they must have been related to the ill-fated Captain Smith. He would go on to say my nan was so unlucky that once a painter poured a full tin of paint on her head from atop a ladder. He would always finish with “So where was I? Oh 'ah, so I paid this bloke a fiver and gave him a tin of paint” to raucous laughter all round.

Here at Higher Horizons, the Government funded education outreach scheme based at Keele and Staffordshire Universities, we have lots of great stories to tell. We were recently approached by two young people who had engaged with our scheme, attending our free summer schools. Both from Blurton, neither were planning on going to university. Following some interventions from Higher Horizons, Lewis has just graduated from Keele with a 2:1 in Biomedical Science, and tells us he was spurred on by his family's Stokie work ethic, his Dad an ex-potter and now lorry driver.

Chloe, whose dad, a plumber, took her to Oxford for an Open Day, following our Higher Horizons summer school at Staffordshire University, said she realised that maybe Oxford was for her when a national leader in gamma ray astronomy, Oxford's Dr Steve Rayner, delivered his talk in his Stoke top! Now studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, the same degree and place that three of the last six Prime Ministers have studied, the moral of these particular stories is that the young people around here are incredibly bright, talented and with a little bit of help can achieve fantastic things.

A big story this summer has been the change in Government of course, which will bring a change in priorities. Our two fantastic universities offer great courses, and there is a feeling that now is the time to really support our universities to keep them delivering world class education for our young people like Chloe and Lewis, as well as those returning to education. Financial sustainability within the Higher Education sector is now absolutely key. Indeed, here at Higher Horizons we have had to navigate a 71% funding cut over the last six years. But navigate it we have.

We hope, then, that the next chapter in the Higher Horizons tale will be a happy one. This year we delivered 923 activities to 11,031 young people, including 195 campus visits. As well as the usual information, advice and guidance sessions that we deliver, we have created a new generation of storytellers. We have seen our young people publishing over 100 novels via the White Water Writers Programme, whilst hundreds of local children have engaged with our Limitless Literature course that sees them meeting each week to read aloud and share thoughts on a particular book.

Working with famed local author and Keele academic, Dr Lisa Blower, next year we will be celebrating 100 years of the formation of our great city with the My Potteries Place project, where 100 young people will write 100 stories all with 100 words. We know how creative our young people are, and we know that these programmes do inspire them to get better grades at GCSE, and progress with confidence to university and into the world of work.

As someone once said, storytelling is the oldest form of education. And here in our region, just like my old grandad, we do it so well.

You can read Lewis and Chloe's full stories at https://www.higherhorizons.co.uk/news