News Archive

My Story
Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours?

This September the BBC launched My Story, a search for real life stories from across the UK. All submitted stories will be entered into a national BBC competition. Fifteen of the best stories will be selected by a panel and made into a special series of five half hour programmes for BBC ONE in 2010. Five stories will be turned into books, with the help of a ghost writer.

The BBC My Story road show will be visiting the Riverfront Theatre in Newport on Saturday 17 October 2009. Come along to see how things are done behind the scenes at the BBC and to have a go at writing your own story.

The My Story campaign is also part of the BBC outreach learning campaign raw skills for everyday life, launched in February 2009. The raw skills for everyday life campaign is aimed at the many adults across the UK who want to improve their everyday skills. The raw website www.bbc.co.uk/raw offers information about managing your money with raw money and tips on how to use a computer with raw computers. Next is raw words, featuring activities to support My Story.

My story and raw words’ objectives are not only to engage a wider audience in writing their personal stories, but also to target adults with low literacy skills. In the UK today there are 12 million adults with low literacy skills and My Story aims to help inspire them to improve and develop their literacy skills.

Non Richards, BBC Learning Project Manager for Wales said: “Stories - especially true stories - have the power to unleash empathy, inspire ideas and motivate us. People must have many wonderful hidden real life stories to be told here in Wales, and we would like them to submit their stories written either in Welsh or English on the My Story website, www.bbc.co.uk/mystory which will be live from this September.”

“We are looking to work with community partners in Wales to promote raw words’ ” added Non Richards. “We want to work with partners in the formal and informal learning sectors to integrate the My Story competition into their plans and courses for the autumn. We can supply partners with free educational resources, as well as the on-line support available which includes video guides with step-by-step guidance to how to compose a story.”

For details on how to enter and for the full terms and conditions click here 

The BBC are offering partners the opportunity to attend My Story training sessions to familiarise themselves with the website and to attend story writing workshops. The details are:

Thursday 1 October 2009 – BBC Broadcasting House, Cardiff
- Morning session: 10.00 am to 1.00 pm – 20 spaces
- Afternoon session: 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm – 20 spaces

• Monday 5 October 2009 – Glyndwr University, Wrexham
*Morning session: 10.00 am to 1.00 pm – 30 spaces
*Afternoon session: 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm – 30 spaces

You must book a place at a session by contacting Eleanor Gardener on eleanor.gardener@bbc.co.uk Spaces get taken up very quickly and are allocated on a first come first served basis

For further information on the BBC My Story campaign please contact
Non Richards, BBC Learning Project Manager for Wales on
02920323526 / non.richards@bbc.co.uk 

Or Eleanor Gardner Learning Project Assistant on
02920 322 550 / eleanor.gardener@bbc.co.uk