Profiles

Coco P grew up in Gasparillo, in southern Trinidad where storytelling was a traditional pastime and everybody in the small village had a story to tell.

He would hear tales from his Grandmothers who worked in the sugar cane fields and other family members - evenings would often be spent together hearing stories from other villagers.

Coco P aims to bring a little Caribbean sunshine over to Hampshire through his stories and songs: "What you carry with you has an effect on people. I have about 90% sunshine in my right foot, about 2% in my right hand and another 50% stored up!"

For the past 10 years, through his interactive storytelling Coco P has been stirring up children's creativity, and encouraging them to think for themselves.

"What gives me pleasure and happiness is when the children acknowledge and understand what the story is trying to tell them. And how they as young individuals can not only tell stories but live in a society of diversity.

"A lot of the stories I tell have a lot of morals in them, you do good things to people, then good thing follow you. And if you do bad things to people, then perhaps one day it'll come back to you."

Coco P feels that traditional storytelling is a dying art. So he's in the process of working with other storytellers to set up a storytelling fellowship in the south.

He is currently involved with Hog the Limelight which is part of a Hampshire county council project and has been visiting local libraries in East Hampshire as part of the project.