The Storytellers Project

Intergenerational remote reading aloud service

The Storytellers project is a library service connecting a community of senior readers to children and their families for remote, yet live, reading aloud sessions. It aims to foster intergenerational relationships among seniors, children and parents. Children rent the Storybell robot from the library and use it at home to connect with seniors willing to read, the Storybell robot transmits their voice and enables the two to converse in real time. Following fieldwork and co-creation in IT and NL, the project was piloted in Empoli, IT, during the lockdown in 2020 involving a public library, 5 families with children aged 3 to 11, 8 storytellers.