Kate Markland at Bradford Community Radio Bingley Festival

How It All Started: Stories at the Kitchen Table

May 15, 2026•2 min read

At this year's Bingley Festival, Kate joined Bradford Community Radio to talk about The Adventures of Bradford, a growing movement helping children across the city discover they have stories worth telling.

She started, as she always does, at the beginning.

How It All Started: Stories at the Kitchen Table

Last summer, after finishing a bedtime read of Treasure Island, Kate turned to Gabriel and asked: "Shall we make up a story where you're the hero?" He said yes immediately. He wanted to defeat sea monsters. He wanted a sidekick, not just any sidekick, a platypus. Kate took notes as he narrated. No grammar corrections. No spellings checked. Just a mother writing down exactly what her son imagined.

Over time, that became The Adventures of Gabriel, an international bestseller. But more than that, it became proof of something: children do not need a classroom, a worksheet, or a writing frame to produce extraordinary stories. They need someone willing to listen and write it down.

Through school workshops across Bradford, children in Years 5 and 6 are now creating their own hero stories using the same method. One child speaks. Their partner scripts. The stories that come out are, as Kate told the radio audience, "gloriously unfiltered." Dragons. Fantastical creatures. Time-travelling missions. Children saving the world with a specificity and confidence that surprises the adults in the room.

Bradford has a deep tradition of oral storytelling. Kate spoke on air about hearing her grandfather's stories in his Yorkshire accent, stories she never read but remembers completely. That is the power of a story told in a voice that belongs to someone you love. It stays.

The kitchen table is where this starts. Not a school workshop, not a publisher, not a curriculum. A table, a child with something to say, and an adult prepared to write it down without correcting a word.

Kate's advice to every parent listening was simple: ask your child to tell you a story tonight. Be their scribe. Do not worry about grammar or spelling. Just let the imagination come out. You will be surprised by what is already there, waiting to be heard.

Kate

Kate Markland is a former award-winning physiotherapist with twenty years of clinical experience, the founder of StoryQuest Global, and the co-author of the international bestselling Adventures of Gabriel children's book series. She developed the StoryQuest methodology from clinical listening principles built across two decades of practice. Taken into schools across the UK, it achieved 100% engagement across 465 children in nine schools with zero behavioural incidents, including children with SEND, EAL learners, and reluctant writers. The research was conducted using Classic Grounded Theory across 318 children, identifying seven self-leadership transformations. It has been presented to the British Psychological Society, accepted by UK Parliament, and submitted to UNICEF. The methodology was built during the hardest period of Kate's life. One hour a week on FaceTime with her son. No desk. No classroom. No permission. What came out of that constraint became an Amazon number one bestseller, a validated research framework, and a movement now reaching schools and families across the UK, India, Pakistan, Canada, the United States, Nigeria, and Australia. Kate has been featured on BBC News, Times Radio, and in international publications across multiple countries. She has submitted evidence to the Justice Committee, the Independent Review of Social Work Regulation, and the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. She was awarded the PhysioTimes Women in Leadership Award. She was told she was the danger. She built the proof that she was the answer.

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