Tracy DW with 'Facing Purpose'

February is the month for celebrating Black History in the USA.
In this podcast episode Tracy continues with her virtual visit
across 'the Pond' with her very first interview. The interview
was recorded on New Year’s Day on the 'Facing Purpose Radio Show'
in the US hosted by Elder Lakia Barnett.


In this the second part of this interview, Tracy shares what
inspired her to create the multi-media platform that is ‘Stories
to be tolled’ reveals the one thing that the stories couldn’t do
without and what is the ‘ultimate’ learning journey for all her
users.


If you enjoy these podcasts then visit the website
https://storiestobetolled.com for the learning journeys and
poetic narratives and why not join us on our mailing list and
receive a free sample of each of the current story titles.


You can also purchase your copies of the poetic narratives
related to this part of the interview ('Caribbean Wind' and 'Bite
from the Big Apple - a story for New York') using the links
below:


Caribbean 'Wind'


Bite from the Big Apple - a story for New York


At times, small parts of the recording are omitted and so the
full transcript is provided below:


LB: Hello, hello, hello! We are back from our
commercial break with the lovely Ms Tracy Williams all the way
from the UK. So Ms Tracy, I was reading in your bio that you have
multi-media platforms explain to me about how that works how you
kinda started to expand from just being an author to doing other
things that you do.


TDW: Well, I think the multi-media learning
platform is really the educationalist side of me. The stories are
the author element of who I am. You know, I spent about 18 months
writing the stories, so I was just in a creative writing flow for
about 18 months and you know, to be really honest once I had
finished the stories Lakia, I had both a sense of elation and
achievement but I also had a sense of deflation as well. Because
the British Empire has such a lot of moving parts to it, I didn’t
want the stories to sit in a vacuum. Because once I’d published
them it would be ‘Well, who are the stories for?’ Who are your
target audience? Why have you written them? Ok, I’ve written them
because I’ve been inspired to write them but there’s got to be a
proof of concept about it.


 When I was writing the stories which must have been back in
2017, 2018 there wasn’t really that much of a heightened
awareness to learn more about the subject of the British Empire,
it was very much a taboo subject (to be really honest, if I’m
really honest about it). It was an ‘uncomfortable truth’ so to
speak that nobody really wanted to talk about or look really
deeply at. I knew that it was important enough to have a platform
and that it should be taught in our schools. It should be read to
children at story time or at bed time at home. I just felt that,
the stories themselves, although they were good, it couldn’t be
left in a vacuum there needed to be some context to it so that
any learner from 9-14 years and upwards would be able to read and
understand but within a context and so that’s why I decided to
create a learning journey to go with the stories.


So, at the back of the stories there are various questions that
the learner can then go upon, they can start carrying out their
own learning journey, their own research after they’ve read the
story. There’s a chronology, so a list of key dates that come up
in the actual story and then there’s an activity that I call
‘build your vocabulary’ because vocabulary is such a difficult
thing to learn and to teach. I decided to pick out phrases and
words within the stories that children and young people would be
able to go off and find out more about and understand how to
build their vocabulary and be able to apply that new vocabulary
to new learning.


I then decided to go a step further and create the learning
platform which is initially where everything lives relating to
‘Stories to be tolled’ The stories can be purchased there (I’m
actually on the website now) and we’ve got other things like
mini-documentaries, which are just like mini films that I’ve
created and learning journeys that continue, are an expansion or
a continuation of each of the stories. If you went on the website
now and clicked on the ‘learning journey’ menu you will see the
titles of each of the four books that are out now as well as four
new titles that I’m going to be planning to launch this year.


If you clicked on to ‘Caribbean Wind’ there would come up an
alternative chronology, suggestions for biographies, historical
sources, You tube videos and I’m developing an art gallery of
alternative history. So, there’s something for all types of
learner and it just feeds into my overall vision for ‘Stories to
be tolled’ that we can take something that in a lot of ways is a
difficult and emotive subject to explore and to learn about and
we can deliver it, we can approach it in a way that is both
thoughtful, engaging, imaginative, interesting and just to break
down some of the taboos about the subject area because I feel
when you’re ignorant about a subject area, the more you are
ignorant the more fearful you are. The more prejudiced you are
and the more ignorance there is around the topic and so that is
what the multi-media platform is there to do, to help the
ordinary person, help the ordinary learner engage and hopefully
something on it will spark their interest to continue or develop
their own learning journey about whatever aspect of the topic
they want to find out about so that was the rationale behind the
learning journey and it’s growing all the time. It’s something
that I’m really proud of, its’ quite unique.


LB: So yes that is really, really interesting
you have your background as an educator, a teacher and you’re
really incorporating these things into everything that you do and
it leaves no room for confusion when people see you and they hear
about you, they know what you stand for. So when people are
getting these books Tracy what do you want the readers to take
from this? When they’re reading your books what do you want then
to learn and take from reading this collection of books?


TDW: I think the one thing that I want them to
learn about is to understand that the world is multi-faceted, the
world is interconnected and it’s not interconnected because we
have all this technology and we have all these social media
platforms. The world is interconnected because this one
phenomenon that took place over a period of 400 years is really
the key to understanding how the world is today.


It’s the one thing that can provide that link to a lot of
international relationships between countries, the way that
countries define their foreign policies with each other. The way
that various Diasporas have developed and emerged out of
displacement of indigenous people from their home lands. I know
that these are difficult subjects to look at but I feel that
these are some of the main things that readers need to understand
and to learn about as they’re reading the stories. I get so many
readers saying to me’ Tracy I never knew about this or I never
knew about that.’ ‘I never knew that the Empire Windrush used to
be a German Nazi warship that was used in WW2. I never knew
anything about the early period of European discovery and how
Britain came about its first encounter of the Caribbean.’ ‘I
didn’t know it was a failed colonial exercise carried out by
Scotland that caused the unification of Scotland and England.’


 Many of us seem to think that it was when Elizabeth 1st
died and James 6th of Scotland became James 1st of England and
united the two countries but stories really do dispel a lot of
assertions, a lot of assumptions that ordinary people like myself
and like you make about history we are taught at school and then
you realise that a lot of it is not necessarily fact, it’s just
coming from a certain perspective and I thought ‘right, that’s my
strapline.’ That is actually how I got the strapline ‘history is
a matter of fact…or perspective?’ because there are so many
perspectives in history. We only hear about the perspective of
the conqueror, of the victor, you never hear of the perspective
of those who have gone past and those who have died and are not
here to tell their tale.


 So the stories is that balance of perspective and just lets
the reader know ‘look, regardless of what you’ve been taught in
school, regardless of your formal education, quite often it’s
what we go out and learn for ourselves that helps us have a much
more balanced view of the world we live in and a greater
tolerance and a greater understanding of why things are the way
they are today.’ Why there are issues and seemingly unsolved
problems in certain parts of the world and more of an empathy for
indigenous populations that are going through a tumultuous time
because we can then use these stories to really un-pick and
understand what the roots of these issues are. So that’s what I
want readers to take away.


(Copyright Tracy D Williams 2022)