Culham Institute

Promoting & Supporting Religious Education

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The Storykeepers Resource

Storykeepers is a cartoon presentation in 13 episodes of the life of Jesus and the stories he told, linked in with the life of an early Christian family suffering under the persecutions of Nero in Rome.

A collection of Collective Worships based on the Storykeepers series are available on this site.

The Storykeepers Series

Nero The year is AD64, a time when the early traditions about Jesus had become fairly fixed and were beginning to be written down but still gained much of their impact from being told orally.

Using animation, the gospel story is presented simply but in many layers. At the same time it stays faithful to the Biblical text.

Ben By the simple device of using Ben and Helena, the bakers and storykeepers, it is possible to convey two gospel traditions simultaneously: Ben is a Jewish story-telling Christian, representing the tradition found in Mark's gospel, and Helena is Greek, representing the tradition found in Luke.

The persecution of Christians and the death of apostles and eye-witnesses provide the setting in which the Christians realize that the stories must be written down, kept safe and handed on.

What you will see...

Storykeepers has been designed so that in each episode the viewer will see:

something about what Jesus did and what he was like as the early Christians understood and told it;
something about the dramatic response of the first Christians to persecution and to the demands of following Jesus in that situation;
some suggestion of what it might mean to follow Jesus in the contemporary world.

A Teachers' Guide has been designed to accompany the Storykeeper books and videos.

Storykeepers was shown on ITV in Spring 1997, and programmes are still being repeated in Spring 2004."This unique religious series often attracted more viewers than the Disney Club. Over 40% of all 4-9 year olds watching television watched Storykeepers." - Paul Corley (Controller, ITV Network Factual Programmes).

Ordering Information...

There are thirteen titles in the Storykeepers series:

1. Breakout	6. Starlight Escape	10. Tricked by Traitor
2. Raging Waters	7. Roar in the Night	11. Tried & True
3. Catacomb Rescue	8. Captured!	12. Caught at the Crossroads
4. Ready Aim Fire	9. Trapped!	13. To the Ends of the Earth
5. Sink or Swim

They are available as:

13 TV programmes
6 videos (£9.99 each) from your local stockist, but becoming out of stock.
13 books in each series (Older Readers series £3.99 each; Younger Readers series £4.99 each), all out of print now.
A complete RE Teacher's pack containing all 13 episodes and the Culham Teacher's Guide (£87.55).