About Lignin Stories
Lignin Stories is a storytelling organisation that caters for parents, teachers, therapists, and caregivers
of children and young adults.
Through our live and online programmes, workshops, events, and resources
we support parents, teachers, therapists, and caregivers to transform complex feelings and behaviours into deep communication and connection.
Lignin is a polymer found in trees.
It transfers to paper and when paper is handled the polymer breaks.
At this point, it releases a vanilla-like smell, which is why old bookshops smell so delicious!
We chose the name because lignin's properties are powerful, just like the work we feel called to do here. It also resonated because it fits one of our life mantras - that beauty and hope push through everything, especially brokenness. The polymer has to break for the comforting smell to exist.
When we embrace this mantra we release ourselves from a sense of helplessness and from stories that don’t serve us, from a sense of ineptitude and brokenness.
This release allows us to embrace wisdom, beauty and hope and as adults we gift these qualities to our children.
This has a huge impact on their lives.
When parents, teachers, therapists, and caregivers approach their relationship to children and young adults through deep connection, we open the world up into a playground of possibility.
This has certainly been our experience and one day soon we will tell you more about how storytelling healed us and is now healing the families, schools, voluntary and government organisations that work with us.
But, meanwhile, we want to share some of the wisdom, beauty and hope that Lignin Stories has shared with our global community since its inception, in 2017.
Over the past eight years, our team of storytellers have told stories to over ten thousand children and adolescents.
They have listened to us, wide-eyed and emboldened whilst we listened to them empowered and inspired by their experience of the world.
Lignin Stories has hosted over 100 workshops, in person and online, for parents, teachers, and caregivers of children and young adults.
We have witnessed so many 'aha' moments as adults realise that our storytelling method makes communication and connection with children so much easier and lighter. We have been moved to see these families and communities receive hope for a peaceful life, sprinkled with story magic.
Lignin Stories Offerings
At the heart of our work is a simple belief: stories help us belong to ourselves and to each other. We bring together research, therapeutic practice, and storytelling to support parents, educators, therapists, and communities in using narrative as a tool for care, learning, and change.
Our offerings are designed to be accessible, sustainable, and genuinely supportive, enhancing family and community bonding, opening us up to deeper, more meaningful communication and allowing us to enjoy our time together in more profound ways.
Story-Based Learning & Wellbeing Workshops
Practical, research-informed sessions for parents, teachers, youth workers, and anyone who works with children. These workshops explore how stories support emotional regulation, resilience, trauma-responsiveness, and relational safety, drawing on literature, care ethics, and therapeutic principles.
Story-care Short Courses
Multi-week learning journeys that introduce the foundations of story-led wellbeing. Each course focuses on a specific area such as co-regulation, conflict transformation, emotional literacy, or trauma-aware storytelling practices. These offerings give participants depth, structure, and time to integrate new skills into daily life.
Story Clinics for Parents
Private or small-group sessions tailored to the needs of individual families. In Story Clinics, we work with narrative patterns that shape behaviour, transitions, fears, and relationships. Parents leave with story-based strategies and a personalised “story prescription” to support their child’s growth.
Professional Development for Educators
Training for teachers and school staff who want to use literature and storytelling to create inclusive, emotionally supportive classrooms. Topics include trauma-responsive education, reading for empathy, story-led conflict resolution, and the role of narrative in wellbeing and learning.
Training for Therapists in Narrative and Story-Based Practice
Specialised workshops and training programmes for therapists, counsellors, and mental health practitioners who want to integrate story into their therapeutic work. These sessions draw on narrative therapy, relational Gestalt practice, children’s literature, and contemporary trauma research to help practitioners:
work with clients’ personal myths and meaning-making
use stories and metaphors to support emotional processing
develop story-based interventions for families and children
bring creativity and depth into the therapeutic encounter
Consulting for Organisations & Schools
Support for institutions seeking to develop story-led wellbeing frameworks or community programmes.
Consulting can include curriculum design, staff training, or long-term guidance on integrating story-based methodologies into organisational culture.
Reading Circles & Community Story Sessions
Small, intimate groups that gather around a text, a children’s book, poem, or folktale, and explore it through therapeutic, literary, and ethical lenses. These circles offer companionship, reflection, and the grounding power of shared reading.
Writing Circles & Creative Practice Support
Spaces for adults who want to reconnect with their voice, develop a sustainable writing practice, or explore their own narratives in a supportive, therapeutic environment. These sessions weave together reflective journaling, creative prompts, and gentle story-based techniques.
Story Resources & Tools
Curated digital resources that support everyday storytelling; reflective prompts, reading lists, guides for parents and educators, and story-based exercises for wellbeing. These tools are designed to be practical, beautiful, and accessible to all.
Our Commitment
Our work is rooted in care, beauty, justice,
and the quiet courage that stories ask of us.
Every offering is designed to resource the adults who hold children’s lives; parents, teachers, therapists, and community workers,
because when we support the adults,
we strengthen the stories children inherit.
FOUNDER
Dr Giuliana Fenech
Dr Giuliana Fenech (PhD) combines research and practice-based specialisations in literature, storytelling, human rights, care, and healing.
She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, at the University of Malta, where her work is focused on children's and young adult literature and culture. Her research is always conducted in, and shared through, community projects. The most recent is the EU-funded project, Seen and Heard: Young People's Voices and Freedom of Expression (www.seenandheardproject.eu), in which she is Principal Investigator.
She founded Lignin Stories in 2017 and through this platform explores how the healing potential of stories can be leveraged more powerfully in both educational and therapeutic settings.
