OUAB

Since 2014, Once Upon a Bus has brought live storytelling to thousands of children on a converted double-decker. OUAB CIC now exists to take that magic off the paid timetable and give it, free, to the children and families who need literacy, belonging and imagination most.

Overview

Once Upon a Bus is a world-on-wheels of storytelling.

OUAB CIC exists so that world can reach every child who needs it, not only those whose schools can pay.

Once Upon a Bus is the UK’s original mobile double-decker storytelling project. Since 2014 it has taken live, screen-free stories directly to schools, parks, festivals and community groups across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West London. On board a customised bus, children aged 0–12 and the adults who care for them enter a world of live narration, costume, props, projection and participation. Sessions are tailored to the National Curriculum, World Book Day themes, authors and local celebrations, and are designed to restore the social act of storytelling as a way of learning language, listening and belonging.

OUAB CIC is the natural evolution of that work. It exists to make the same quality of immersive storytelling freely available to children and communities, particularly those facing literacy disadvantage, special educational needs, or limited access to enrichment. Surpluses and grants are locked to community benefit: more free workshops, more accessible venues, educator training, and new learning resources.

Vision

To rekindle the joy of authentic storytelling so that literacy, imagination and community grow together; first where they are most needed, then as far as the work can reach.

We believe children still crave what they have always needed: real stories, told live, shared together. In an age of screens, declining reading for pleasure and widening attainment gaps, our vision is simple and stubborn: to put human-centred storytelling back at the heart of childhood learning. We see a borough, and then a wider region, in which every child can step into a story; every teacher has practical tools to use storytelling as teaching; and families who have drifted from books find their way back around a shared tale. We want analogue, joyful, face-to-face learning to sit beside the digital world, not be replaced by it. The CIC’s longer vision is a sustainable community enterprise: mobile workshops that travel to need; educator and family training; modular multi-media learning tools; and, in time, more accessible vehicles and a permanent base from which stories can travel further still. “With a good wind behind us,” this is work for generations, not a season.

Impact

OUAB CIC converts a twelve-year track record into free, targeted provision. Funding buys workshops in high-need and SEN schools, community sessions that cost families nothing, teacher training, and adapted resources. Success is measured in attendance, teacher and parent feedback, engagement of children who usually switch off, and the gradual closing of access to enrichment, not in ticket sales.

For more than a decade the bus has shown what happens when learning is made delightful. Children who disengage from conventional lessons often listen more intently, take part more willingly, and remember more of what they hear. Teachers and headteachers describe sessions that spark imagination, lift confidence, hold whole classes, and stay with children long after the bus has gone.

The work is not entertainment for its own sake. Sessions use a three-part learning framework "the Whale, the Star and the Campfire" binding literacy to environmental responsibility, scientific curiosity and social-emotional life around a shared story. That model has been used with mainstream schools, SEN settings, disability groups, hospices and free community events such as Maidenhead’s Big Read.

The local case is urgent. In RBWM, Key Stage 2 combined reading, writing and maths at expected standard stood at 60% in 2023/24, with disadvantaged pupils at 30% representing a 36-point gap, wider than the national picture. Nationally, reading for pleasure among children has fallen sharply. OUAB CIC is built to meet that gap with early, joyful intervention rather than another worksheet.

Independent voices have already named the difference: inclusion; children of all ages and abilities engaged; a “case for human-centred storytelling” made stronger; experiences that families and schools still talk about years later.

Ambition

From a single beloved bus to a lasting community service: free where the need is greatest, rigorous where the curriculum demands it, and ambitious enough to keep stories moving for the next generation.

Our immediate ambition is practical: two free targeted school interventions a month, then weekly support for schools and communities that cannot currently afford the bus; specialist sessions for SEN and disability groups; regular free pop-ups in towns, villages, parks and libraries; and training so teachers can carry the method into the classroom after we leave.

Beyond that, we want to grow the infrastructure the work deserves: more accessible vehicles so stairs are no longer a barrier; new curriculum-aligned kits and digital project resources; a trained network of storytellers and young volunteers; and partnerships, including with nearby creative industries, that turn local storytelling into lasting learning media without losing the live, human core.

The larger ambition is educational equity in miniature: that a child in a pupil-premium classroom, a SEN school or a family under cost-of-living pressure should meet stories of the same quality as a child at a fee-paying or well funded school. If the original bus proved that live storytelling still works, the CIC exists to prove it can belong to everyone.

Summary

OUAB Community Interest Company was formed by the creators of Once Upon a Bus to address declining reading enjoyment and stubborn local attainment gaps through high-quality, immersive, screen-free storytelling. The parent project has delivered curriculum-aligned workshops across the South East since 2014. The CIC’s purpose is to remove the price barrier: free mobile workshops for high-need and SEN schools, free community events, educator training, and new accessible resources. All assets are locked to community benefit. We are seeking partnership funding to move from occasional free outreach to a reliable monthly, then weekly, service for the children least likely to encounter storytelling of this quality.

Stories built this country long before classrooms did. We have spent twelve years proving that a bus, a voice and a circle of children can still do that work. Help us make sure the next chapter is not reserved for only those who can afford it, but offered first to those who cannot.