Our current facilitation of workshops is free of charge to organisations. If you would be interested in hosting a workshop at RGU Garthdee, please get in touch with our team, who may be able to arrange this at no cost to your group or organisation. The workshops can be facilitated using the StoriedPlace hamper you already have, or we can provide our own.
We are open to other workshop themes or can provide existing workshops.
For more information, please contact the team at:
Workshop Theme: Supernatural Storytelling, Dark Tourism and Place
Ghost stories and supernatural narratives are powerful ways to connect people to place. They bring history, landscapes, buildings and streets to life with memory, emotion and mystery, shaping how places are experienced. In tourism and heritage, supernatural storytelling has become a popular form of placemaking, used to attract visitors, enliven heritage sites and create immersive experiences that blend history, folklore and imagination.
While ghost tourism is often associated with entertainment, it also raises important questions about authenticity, representation and responsibility. Ghost stories frequently draw on real historical events, marginalised lives, unresolved pasts and personal experiences. The ways these stories are collected, curated and created into something new, can reinforce stereotypes, obscure and fragment complex histories or, alternatively, open new ways of engaging people with heritage, memory and place.
The StoriedPlace toolkit provides a structured way to critically explore ghost storytelling and place. It helps organisations reflect on whose stories are told, where stories come from, how fear and fascination are mobilised, and how entertainment, education and ethics can be balanced in visitor experiences. Drawing on over a decade of research in ghost tourism, supernatural storytelling, placemaking and heritage interpretation, our team can facilitate a workshop with your organisation to support thoughtful, creative and responsible approaches to ghost tourism and supernatural narratives.
Key audience: Heritage and tourism practitioners, tour operators, museums and historic sites, destination management organisations, local authorities, cultural organisations and community groups involved in developing or managing ghost tours and supernatural storytelling experiences.
Workshop Theme: Placemaking, Tourism and Place Representation through Storytelling
Stories shape how places are understood and experienced across the past, present and future. Storytelling is a key instrument of placemaking. It represents a place to visitors, new residents and businesses through destination marketing, branding, events, attractions and interpretation materials.
Incorporating local stories in placemaking helps showcase the uniqueness and identity of a place. However, it is important to ensure that storytelling is sensitive to context. It should consider the diversity of voices and the ethics of collecting, curating and creating stories for meaningful and sustainable placemaking.
The StoriedPlace toolkit provides a structured way to surface key issues that underpin place-based storytelling. It helps organisations consider context, voice and the community’s sense of place in placemaking projects. Drawing on expertise in sense of place research and tourism studies, our team can facilitate a workshop with your organisation to support critical reflection on the use of storytelling in place representation through branding, marketing and destination development narratives.
Key audience: Destination Management Organisations, community tourism associations, local authorities and other groups working on place promotion to visitors, new residents and investors.
Workshop Theme: Local Heritage and History Storytelling
Local history and heritage matter because they anchor people to a place, give communities identity, and help us understand how the past has shaped our present and may inform our future. Telling stories about local history and heritage is one of the most powerful ways to keep culture alive and help people feel connected. Local history often shapes community identity through traditions, buildings, artefacts, or dialect. These shared memories can help people feel connected.
Often, local history stories can highlight extraordinary people, places, and events in the seemingly ordinary. Hidden voices, marginalised groups, and the apparently commonplace can often have rich stories tell. Sometimes, the challenge can be working out how best to gather, interpret, and share such stories; but for many local heritage or history groups, telling stories of their community can bring out emotion, personality, and meaning, helping people relate better, and in a more engaged way, to the past.
The StoriedPlace toolkit provides a structured way to explore how we can best tell stories about people, places, and events. It helps organisations and groups to reflect on whose stories are told, where stories come from, why they are important vehicles to help us understand our communities and their past, and how to retell them in exciting and engaging ways. Drawing on long experience of research in cultural heritage and storytelling interpretation, our team can facilitate a workshop with your organisation to support thoughtful, creative and responsible approaches to the community’s stories and narratives.
Key audience: Local history and heritage groups, societies, or organisations, local historians, heritage and tourism practitioners, community groups involved in developing or managing volunteer-run heritage centres or museums.