THE Sensory Trust, a charity based in Cornwall, has been working with the ARB unit at Budehaven School.

The students took part in some story writing workshops to create a sensory story. The trust has been working on a Heritage Lottery funded project called ‘Pilchards, Pits and Postcards’, looking at four heritage stories from across Cornwall — one of which is based in Bude. The work in Bude is focusing on the history of surfing and its importance to the seaside town.

As part of this project, the Sensory Trust received some funding from FEAST to run a writing project with children living with learning disabilities.

The trust and its writer in residence, Madeleine Amos, visited Budehaven to run story-based workshops. The students talked about how a story goes together, how to make a good story and how they could include sensory highlights in a story.

A sensory story is made up of around ten short sentences with accompanying sensory highlights. As the group explored different sensory experiences, they discovered they could build a narrative around the journey of a surfer in search of his perfect wave.

Lynsey Robinson, project manager at the Sensory Trust, said: “The students did a brilliant job of creating the character of Shadow the surfer, because he looks like a shadow in his wetsuit, and his dog Jerry.”

With the structure of the story in place, Madeleine the writer could use the words and descriptions from the students to craft them into a story, resulting in a fantastic sensory story, which was told on the beach with the class.

Lynsey continued: “There is tasting of salt, rubbing wax onto a surfboard and putting your arm into a wetsuit. It is a great story, and the students did a great job creating it.”

The students will be sharing the story of Shadow the surfer with the rest of Budehaven School on national multi-sensory story telling day, on September 22. There will also be a kit of the story left with the Castle Bude for visiting school groups to use.

Lynsey added: “A big thank you and well done to all the students for being part of this amazing project, and we look forward to experiencing more of their stories in the future with their new-found story creating skills.”

To find out more about the project and other work of the Sensory Trust, including the dementia walking group in Bude, visit www.sensorytrust.org.uk