What we do
when children’s words take center stage
At MakeBelieve Arts, we put story and poetry at the heart of early years education. Through drama, storytelling, and rhyme, we help young children express themselves, build confidence, and feel they belong.
At a time when many children struggle with communication and language, we give practitioners creative tools to nurture each child’s voice from the very start.
Our programmes are practical, inclusive, and easy to embed. Designed to work together or stand alone, they offer a complete, story-rich approach, from listening to stories and reciting poems, to acting out and inventing tales of their own. Each programme includes a blend of practitioner training, videos to share with children, and supporting resources, making it easy to bring story and poetry into daily practice in any school or setting.
Today, our work reaches thousands of children across the UK and beyond.
“Fantasy play is the glue that binds together all other pursuits, including the early teaching of reading and writing skills.”
Vivian Gussin Paley
A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play
Why Story and Poetry Matter
Story and poetry ignite different parts of a child’s development, together, they create a rich foundation for language, imagination, confidence, and connection.
Story helps children:
- Imagine things that aren’t there, building the foundations of abstract thinking
- Use symbolic representation, a key step toward reading, writing, and maths
- Process emotions and explore difficult ideas in a safe, creative way
- Develop narrative thinking, sequencing, and cause-and-effect understanding
- Step into different roles, developing empathy
- Express ideas through word actions and gestures
- Take ownership of learning by creating something that is truly their own
- See their spoken words turned into written ones, bridging the gap between storytelling and literacy
Poetry helps children:
- Tune into the sounds and patterns of language, laying the groundwork for phonics
- Hear and feel syllables, rhyme, and rhythm, the building blocks of literacy
- Strengthen memory and recall through musical rhythmic repetition
- Build vocabulary, comprehension and sentence fluency in a meaningful context
- Join in, even without fully understanding every word, supporting children at every stage of language development.
- Recite poems together as a community, helping children across a range of abilities connect, join in, and grow in confidence through shared rhythm and participation.
This isn’t extra. It’s essential. Story and poetry are how children learn, connect, and grow.
How we work
We partner with schools, early years settings, Local Authorities, and Multi-Academy Trusts to bring story-rich, inclusive practice to life.
Our programmes combine professional development with ready-to-use resources that help practitioners build confidence using drama, poetry, and story acting. Everything we offer is easy to embed, designed to support the curriculum, and grounded in how children actually learn.
We know children thrive when they feel heard. That’s why we centre everything around story, and poetry - both powerful and accessible tools to support language, wellbeing, creativity, and connection.
Together with practitioners, we create classrooms where:
- Every child’s voice is valued
- Movement and imagination go hand in hand
- And stories become the foundation for confident, joyful learning
Reaching Further: The Story Access Fund
We believe access to stories and poetry should be a right, not a privilege. That’s why we created The Story Access Fund.
This fund allows us to offer subsidised programmes to early years settings and schools working in areas of greatest need, helping more children hear stories, recite poems, and share their own.
Every time someone buys from us, 10% of the sale goes straight into the Story Access Fund, supporting our mission to reach further, into the classrooms and communities that need it most.
Our Programmes
Helicopter Stories
A child-led storytelling approach where children create their own stories, an adult scribes them, and the class acts them out. Inspired by the work of Vivian Gussin Paley.
Our Helicopter Stories on Demand training gives practitioners everything they need to get started.
“Children are so keen to engage. We’ve seen them grow in confidence to the point where every single one of our children was able to tell a story in our forest school.”
Andi Guildford-Sinclair, Nursery Room Leader
Interactive storytelling adventures guided by Trisha Lee, inviting children to step inside each story together and move through the narrative as a group.
“MakeBelieve Arts get it right again! Fantastic resource. Every child is thought about and planned for – key vocabulary, visuals, simple steps. The children love it and so do we.”
Helen Prud’homme - Assistant Headteacher
A collection of short rhymes with actions, supported by a video demonstration.
Poetry Basket 1: Seasons includes rhymes nspired by autumn leaves, spring rain, summer sunshine, and more.
Poetry Basket 2: Themes offers poems across a wide range of topics, from dinosaurs and space to seaside adventures and All About Me.
“These poems are so catchy and easy to use. My children amaze me at how quickly they pick up the words.”
Claire Goodwin Reception Teacher
An audio-based collection of fairy tales and folktales, enhanced by music and sound effects, so children can listen, imagine and enjoy.
“We’ve just done a week on Chicken Licken. Our 3-year-olds made masks, and acted it out again and again. They picked up new words like ‘calamity’ and ‘disaster,’ and started using them in their play.”
Jo Cryan - Nursery
Endorsement
"As someone who studies how children’s brains develop, I’m always drawn to approaches that reflect what neuroscience tells us about learning. The work of MakeBelieve Arts does exactly that.
Whether through storytelling, poetry, movement or imaginative play, their programmes activate the core systems that support early development. They encourage the growth of mirror neurons, those brain pathways that help children learn by watching, imagining and empathising. They nurture joint attention, which lays the foundations for communication, connection and language. And they embrace embodied learning, where movement and narrative combine to create deep, lasting understanding.
What I admire about MakeBelieve Arts is that their work is both joyful and deeply grounded in developmental science. Children are not pushed into learning, they are invited into it, through story, sound, rhythm and imagination. It’s inclusive, accessible and profoundly respectful of the way children naturally make sense of the world.
In my view, this is brain-friendly learning at its best, creative, research-informed, and truly child-centred."
Dr Jacqueline Harding is a child development expert, author of The Brain That Loves to Play, and Director of Tomorrow’s Child. She advises on early years policy and children’s media, including Teletubbies, Bing, and Peter Rabbit.
