By Sara Arsalane | Founder & Managing Director
Dear friend,
These past three months were some of our busiest of the year. We held our very first Untold Stories Festival, sent a storytelling bus across Berlin, gathered for our Summer Bash, and saw new partnerships take root across Europe. It was a season defined by connection, in every sense of the word.
Untold Stories: Our First Children’s Literature Festival
From September 18 to 20, we welcomed the first edition of Untold Stories, our multilingual children’s literature and storytelling festival, to Berlin. Over three days at Refugio Berlin, ZLB, and Spore Initiative, families, children, authors, and artists came together for readings, live illustration, puppetry, music, food, and craft. We closed on the dance floor at Spore with all our little readers and their families!
Untold Stories in numbers:
The festival was made possible by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, and by ZLB, Spore Initiative, and Refugio Berlin for giving it a home. A big thank you to everyone who made it what it was.
The lilipad Storytelling Bus
This summer, our Storytelling Bus brought books, poetry, movement, and dance directly to children and families across Berlin. At a time when spaces for communities facing structural discrimination are being questioned and attacked, we believe it’s more important than ever to create spaces where children feel safe, represented, and free to take part.
Artists 6aha (rap and poetry), Ivonne (dance and movement), and Katharina (reading and storytelling) turned an ordinary bus into a travelling home for stories. Thank you to the Welcome Alliance Fund for making it possible, and to Linie 94 for providing the bus.
lilipad Summer Bash
In July, our community came together for another joyful Summer Bash, an afternoon and evening of music, book swapping, and shared food in support of our libraries and storytelling programmes. Despite the heat, friends, families, artists, and supporters filled the space with energy. Thank you to Refuge Worldwide for hosting and to the musicians who shared their craft. Every ticket, donation, and conversation helps us keep creating spaces where children can read, imagine, and thrive.
Narratives of Hope: Building Partnerships That Last
Across our Narratives of Hope network in Berlin, Paris, and Siracusa, this was a season of reflection as well as activity. Partners from across Europe gathered in Berlin for Beyond the Project, a day built around one question: how do we build collaborations that last beyond a single project? Partners shared plans to continue the network through further storytelling initiatives.
New photography storytelling workshops also began in both cities. In Berlin, participants at an accommodation centre began working with photographer Salima Hamrani. They started from maps of their first homes, reflected on memories, places, and emotions, and imagined a shared landscape shaped by their hopes for the future. This is the first step in an ongoing photography series. In Paris, participants at two of our partner centres discovered Kamishibai, a traditional Japanese paper theatre, in a workshop led by Sarah Melloul.
Watch the Narratives of Hope recap: https://youtu.be/aSTqtfZFfUI
New: The Community Librarian Programme
This season we launched our Community Librarian Programme, which supports volunteer residents to become local stewards of our library spaces. Community librarians welcome children and families, support reading activities, and act as trusted points of contact. The programme is being piloted in four accommodation centres across Berlin, with a special focus on women and caregivers, whose multilingualism and community ties help build belonging. If the pilot succeeds, we hope to bring the model to more of our libraries.
Looking ahead
This season reminded us that stories travel through books, but also through music, food, puppets, photographs, buses, and dance floors, and that community, at every scale, is what makes this work possible.
Help us keep the stories going: [donation link]
Thank you for standing with us.
With gratitude,
The lilipad Team
Links:
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