theatre

The 'flower girls' at York station

Station Stories

On Friday 5th May, seven female students from Hull University's Scarborough campus, dressed strikingly in ballgowns and carrying armfuls of flowers, boarded a train from Scarborough to York. Before, during and after the journey to York and back, they handed out flowers and postcards to the passengers, inviting them to share their stories of Scarborough and York.

Why did they do it?

The girls buy their tickets

The girls are all year two performance and theatre students, and Station Stories was their final project for the year. As one of the girls explains, "The performance was the end result of an interesting process in which we visited museums and went on ghost walks in Scarborough and York to see how the past is represented in different contexts. We came up with the idea of Station Stories as a way of gathering and sharing memories, which are very important to the way the past is perceived. We decided to dress in ball gowns to make ourselves look special on the trains, and also to show how the past is often glamourised".

Their side of the story...

Here, the girls give accounts of the day.

"It was an absolutely wonderful experience. We arrived at the station on a hot, sunny day (incredible for Scarborough!), dressed in flowing prom dresses, fully made-up with flowers in our hair - and holding armfuls of flowers. While we waited for our train, we wandered around the station and outside, offering flowers to everyone in sight - old ladies in bus shelters, rail staff, kids in pushchairs... wishing all of them a lovely day. It was very special to see people's faces change. At first, they walked along the street or station platform, head down and frowning inwardly, then as they saw one of us, they looked curious and slightly suspicious, and then when they were given a smile and a lovely tulip or chrysanthemum, they just started grinning and thanked us, or said we looked wonderful. Very, very few people turned us down."

"I found it amazing how many people really welcomed the chance to talk to a stranger about themselves, their childhoods and so on. They were also all very grateful for their flowers. The journey went so quickly. I talked to a huge mix of people. There was a doctor from Sudan who had lived and worked for three months in Scarborough hospital, two Japanese people who turned out to be students from Sheffield, a young mum with a five year old, two music lecturers from the university, two business people who initially didn't want to talk, but ended up telling me quite a bit about their day in Scarborough and the hotel they had stayed at, six schoolgirls who wrote me an amazing ghost story about York and a rather gruff older lady who with just a little persuasion actually ended up sharing some wonderful stories about herself."

I'll swap you this flower for a story...

"We were taken by how every person had such different memories of York and Scarborough. Some people concentrated on the pubs or shops they had just visited in York, while others remembered special days from their childhood - a birthday trip to Betty's with godparents, perhaps. Some had spent many months in Scarborough but spent most of their time around a hospital, a board room or a university. Some had spent their lives there and remembered days from their childhood when a football team visited school or the queen had visited. I realised how sometimes we rarely get the chance to talk about these special days from our past. Everyone seemed to welcome the opportunity."

"It was lovely to share memories. I talked to a mum about what brought me to Scarborough for university. She talked to me about how she had spent her life here. It became very easy to connect with people, and soon we were sparking conversations all over the train between strangers as they shared their nostalgia."

"As I'm not used to being sociable on trains, I was nervous about the reactions we would receive from members of the public. However, the majority of reactions were positive, with travellers taking an interest in our project and obligingly sharing their memories of both York and Scarborough.
Our gifts of flowers also made a lot of people smile."

"I learnt a lot yesterday and actually it's given me a huge amount of confidence and given me more faith in people. I'm still amazed at how open everyone was. It was interesting that the flower-gift and the ball dresses did so much to open people up, to convince them that we weren't trying to convert them or sell them anything."

"At York station, we ran out of flowers far too quickly so we made our way down to the National Rail Museum down the road. I tripped on my heels but it was ok! We had a shouted conversation with people on top of an open top sightseeing bus! Lots of people thought we were going to a wedding but couldn't figure out who was the bride. At the NRM, we went and sat in the Japanese bullet train and each took a picture postcard of York on which we wrote one of the stories we had been told on the train. We were really interested in the way the bullet train seemed so displaced in such an ancient city. It seemed to reflect the way we felt somewhat displaced, dressed in such amazing outfits among commuters and tourists. On the walk back to York station, we gave our postcards to people who caught our eye and explained that they could pass them on to other people if they wanted to. I gave mine to the lady in the AMT coffee stand."

So what happens next?

The girls now hope to continue the performance through their website, www.stationstories.com, where they'll soon be publishing the stories shared with them, along with photographs of the day. They'd also like members of the public to continue to share their stories with them through the website. In addition to this, they hope to continue the performance using different stations or routes.

So if a girl in a nice dress hands you a flower next time you're on a train, you know what to do!