Another storytelling program that deals with a modern challenge.
To be honest until that evening I never really cared or thought much about cuckoos. Of course, I would search my pockets for money every time heard them. But apart from that?

After one and a half hours in the yurt on ‘The Land’ I know more about cuckoos

... than probably a bunch of biology lessons would have told me. And not only that: I now feel compassion and admiration for these birds – I now really care about them. That’s what storytelling can do!

There once was a research project.

They were looking for ways to communicate their findings to the public. That’s where Malcolm Green got in: “Why don’t you try storytelling for a change?” And he was in. They fitted a radio tag on a cuckoo and monitored his flight. But Malcolm did not stick to the computer screen. He also flew to Africa hoping to find his little friend there.

In this program Malcolm takes us on the journey of this little hero

... sprinkled now and then with myths and fairytales of the cuckoo.

I don’t need to write anything here about this program being entertaining and interesting. That goes without saying.

Really remarkable is the knowledge and even above that the sensitisation

... for the needs of these creatures and the fragility of their habitats that this one evening created.

Like ‘Nexus’ – but still in a very different way – this storytelling program conveys to its audience a sense of what we are losing and of the urgency and importance to save it.

And it does that on levels our intellect can’t reach.

And probably nothing else but storytelling can. Storytelling doesn't just pass on information. It makes you experience it. How precious for the change we need!

The first thing that Tracey would tell you about herself will probably be

“I’m a networker.”
But what is even more important to her: “I love children. I love to listen to children.”
There it is again. You need to listen to be able to tell.

Tracey’s life really is all about stories and storytelling

One of her ‘babies’ is the ‘Storyteller’s Book Club’. It’s a monthly virtual meeting point on Zoom that I have grown to appreciate a lot over the last years.
Finally, I get to meet Tracey in person. She has set me up with most of the people I have met so far. She truly is a real networker.

Tracey tells stories mostly to children.

An area of storytelling that I’m not familiar with at all.
She regularly tells stories in the cancer ward of a children’s hospital. That’s a very individual setup. Just one kid at a time. Unfortunately, I can’t accompany her there.
But fortunately she is also telling stories in schools. And there I’m allowed to go with her.
So, on Wednesday we go to a primary school. That day it will all be about witches. I am so curious!

Equipped with her ukulele and several self-crafted rhythmic instruments

... Tracey heads off. It’s a matter of seconds for her to draw the kids into her stories and songs. We all had so much fun!
But even at the end the children weren’t quite sure of how scared they should be of the witch.
My home is so much closer to the Russian wood in which the scary Baba Yaga lives. So, even while we were leaving some wide-open eyes asked me in a whisper, if I have ever seen that ugly witch.
What a magical afternoon!

To make sure that she will never run out of stories

... Tracey also runs a small but very special bookshop.
She was in the process of setting up some training for storytellers when covid killed all her various enterprises.

The first thing I would tell you about Tracey

“She is flowing over with ideas. If the world of stories could be just a tiny bit more profitable here Tracey would make our world so much more colourful with all her ideas.”

https://www.wildaboutstory.co.uk/

Do you remember Tom? Sitting in Amy’s kitchen? Well, Tom told me about a storytelling evening in Llangollen. Next day – on Tuesday.

Fiona Eadie & Hannah Moore (mother & daughter)
FAIT, FAITH & FORTUNE

A nice evening. I felt very much at home. I knew many of the stories and have told most of them myself. And that’s where it gets interesting! Stories that are so familiar to me being shaped differently.

After Llangollen I’m heading on to the Llyn Peninsula, to Felin Uchaf.

What a special place!

Dafydd Davies-Hughes together with his family and the whole community has created something extraordinary. This charity project has recultivated the land. They have built roundhouses with the material being available in the area. They grow vegetables, sell them and offer them as delicious meals in the café.

Dafydd has grown up with stories

His Grandmother had been an endless source of folktales. No wonder that Dafydd has grown into a truly exhilarating storyteller. Actually, Dafydd is a craftsman, an ecological activist, a project manager, someone who makes dreams come true.

One dream he made come true is the roundhouse that has been built for storytelling specifically. There is a fire burning in the middle of the roundhouse. Different kinds of seats are arranged around it in circles. A fascinating location – pure atmosphere!

This is where Dafydd is telling stories

... if he’s not telling them somewhere else in Europe. And this is where all the big names have already been. Every week (!) there is a storytelling evening. Every week there will be 50-120 people coming to listen, to laugh, to awe. The people come to the middle of nowhere. You must travel lots of tiny streets with hardly any houses to get here. Here you don’t get to by chance. Here you really want to have to come to.
Sitting here on a Sunday evening at the fire, savouring Dafydd’s stories I get the magic that keeps bringing people here.

Dafydd is a full body storyteller He fills the whole roundhouse with his way of telling. He also told a few stories that I know or tell myself. But Dafydd again finds a totally different life in them. That really is fascinating!

The day before his storytelling event I get the chance to have a chat with Davydd.

We soon land on the subject that seems to be dominating this trip so far

Why isn’t storytelling as popular as it should be? Dafydd confirms what Mike had already made very clear: Nobody here can live on storytelling alone. Dafydd’s approach to explaining this is very interesting, though.
Storytelling maybe one of the oldest forms of art, but it has always been free. Storytellers my have a patron at court, but never would somebody pay to listen to a story. The common folk couldn’t afford such luxuries anyway. So, is it in our genes that we rather get a story told for free?

So, why is it that even here this artform is rather unknown?

Doesn’t this country have a more living history with storytelling? “Yest it does”, Dafydd confirms. But it was really getting close to becoming history. To die out. From the last smoulders of the ashes today’s storytelling scene has been erected. It saved the stories, took it out of the living rooms onto the stages and into the roundhouses.

So, what can we do to leverage storytelling to the popularity that it deserves?

“Carry the stories into the world und let them do their work”, is Dafydd’s advise.
Well, that definitely works in Felin Uchaf!

Bear with me a little before we get to that …

It’s Monday morning

The festival is over, and the camping vans are leaving the site. Tracey Collins and want to have some breakfast together before we part. ((I’ll tell you more about Tracey and her engagement in storytelling in the post after next.) While we’re having breakfast Tracey changes her mind. She will not go home straight but pay Amy Douglas a visit first. Don’t I want to come? What a question!

Amy’s table is full with food and people

She and her family just returned from the festival themselves. Then there is also a friend of theirs – Tom (having been to the festival, too) and Juliana Marin – a young storyteller from Columbia – with her partner. Those two are currently telling themselves around the world.

To be honest, I myself am still a bit dizzy from the festival. But at this table there is still or again a lot of talking about the stories and the myths we all heard. These guys have stories flowing through their veins.
Amy lives for stories and their telling. That’s one reason why she hosts many tellers travelling through her area.

Then Mike arrives

He looks a few days older the rest of us. He wants to pick up Juliana for an evening of storytelling. Don’t I want to come, too? I could park in his garden for the night. Perfect!
Mike is organising the ‘Spoken Word Club’ in Shropshire. Once a month people are gathering to sing and play music, to tell tales and read poems, to share a drink and a chat. What a wonderful idea!

During the evening I realise that I am hosted by Mike Rust

He’s a longtime pillar of this storytelling scene. He himself tells stories since he is twenty. He co-founded and co-managed the storytelling festival ‘Festival At The Edge’ (FATE) till they got up to 1,500 visitors.
On this very chair I am now sitting on enjoying a lovely tea fixed by Mike’s wife Lynn hundreds of storytellers from all over the world have already been sitting. That’s a bit humbling …
Another live dedicated to storytelling.

So, what is a storyteller without a spouse

According to Mike Rust it is a Mythos.
No storyteller – no matter who famous and popular – can live on storytelling alone. Everyone has an additional income: A spouse, a heritage, another job (if time allows).
This is not very encouraging …

P.S. Attending the ‘Spoken Word Club’ was my first chance to tell in story in English. Everyone there is still alive and well. 😀

07.-09.07.2023 – ‚Beyond the Border‘ – a Storytelling Festival

My first storytelling festival. Indeed, my first festival ever. Eight tents have been put up for storytelling, music and workshops. So, the first thing I had to come to terms with was that I would miss more than I would watch.

‘Beyond the border’ is one of the biggest storytelling festivals in the UK

... and there are quite a few around! It attracts people from – well, not all over the world – but way beyond the borders of this country. So, appearing there are the more well-known storytellers.

The variety of styles and subjects is amazing

You get historical tellings, the fairy tales but also shows that would deal with present day subjects.

Of the many fantastic shows, I have seen, the program of Carl Gough has impressed me the most. I’ve ‘met’ Carl on LinkedIn and I knew he cared a lot about ecology. But how would you combine that with storytelling. Doesn’t sound very entertaining, does it? But wouldn’t it be just great if it DID work? So Carl’s show ‘Nexus’ was top of my list.

Carl did not tell a variety of wisdom stories telling us more or less indirectly of our rights and wrongs. Carl told us about the Everglades. About how they used to be, their importance, their destruction but also about how the have been saved again and again. Carl told us about how much one single person can achieve and about how little it sometimes takes. A tale full of light and hope – lively and entertaining.
So that’s how it works!

All in all: I’d do it again anytime! But next time I’ll take a toilet-tent … 😀

It has been rather quiet here for a while.
The details of preparations, the nerves, the up-and-downs of daily life – you all know that. It didn’t seem to be necessary to write it down here, too.

Far more important to me is to tell you about people, stories and other beauties that will cross my path. I’m really looking forward to that.

In three days I will start. It still feels rather unreal to me.
But, despite this sense of unreality, preparations are nearly done.
I decided on a slow start. The ferry will bring me from Calais to Dover on July 5h. That leaves enough time for a day in Bruges in Belgium. And it leaves enough time to maybe get a phone card and check the technical equipment for its UK-compatibility. It leaves enough time to get used to driving on the left-hand side.

The first fixed date is the storytelling festival 'Beyond the Border' in Wales starting on July 7^th. Lots of storytellers from all over the world. Lots of stories.
What a way to start! I’m so much looking forward to that!!

In three months' time I'll be in the UK

... if things work out as planned ...

Anyway, it's time to arrange meetings with storytellers there. But that seems to be more difficult than I thought. Though actually that shouldn't be surprising at all. The life of a storyteller is a very active and busy one.

A good opportunity to take a look into a storyteller's life

Obviously, this is showing a storyteller's life in Germany as I haven't peeped into others yet.
Storytellers are wearing many different hats as we say. A bigger sized company would have different positions like

• Book Keeping
• Tax Accounting
• Management
• Acquisition
• PR
• Marketing

Storytellers do all that themselves. And let me tell you: The talent of telling stories doesn't necessarily come with the talents for all the other jobs.

Now we get to the actual story work.

For one grapping story I read about a hundred far less interesting

But when I found that one story the fun begins.

• What touches, thrills, inspires me about or in the story?
• How do I bring these aspects out - in an entertaining way?
• Where does the story help us to escape and where do we identify with it?
• What is the rhythm of this story?
• What is its setting?
• Who are the characters?
• The voice needs to bei kept happy.
• The facial muscles want to stay smooth.
• It helps to keep the overall reception of the body alive.

This list could go on forever.

And let me tell you something else: This is an absolutely interesting, enriching and fulfilling work! Crowned, of course, when enjoying the fruits of this work together with the audience.

Is storytelling in Ireland and in the UK easier?

Is it more well-known? More widely practiced? More popular? Is it easier to make a living out of it?
That are some of the questions I'd love to shed a bigger light on.

Great idea - but absolutely impossible

That was were I started.

• time & work
• finances of course
• but mainly and most of all my health

Those were the biggest obstacles on my way. Then life stepped in and started to work its magic.

Buy a ccmping vehicle and start renting it out!

Needless to say, that was one of Volkers great ideas. Fed by his ancient longing for a camping van. However, it is a great plan if it works out. And once we got a plan our now new familiy member (see above) stepped into our life. The price was 'foolproof'. Should our plan not work out we can still sell this van without much loss after this adventure.
But we love him already -parting would be hard ...

The job-thing

I'm an employee and also self-employed. Both areas looked rather difficult to be left alone for such a long time. But now there is actualy a timeframe that works perfect for both fields. The rough planning currently looks like this:

Beginng of July until beginning of August I'll criss-cross through the UK.
Beginning of August until Beginning of September I'll explore Irland.

Probably the storytelling festival 'Beyond the Border' in Wales, 7.-9. July is a good way to start.

Health - a must-have

Craniosacral therapy seems to work. The alternative practitioner achieved an improvement of my health. Nobody managed to do that before - a real miracle to me!
The headaches are now less often, less painful and shorter in duration. I don't need time to regenerate after an attack anymore. I can now dare to make appointments. Creativity and energy are coming back. I can tell stories again!

Don't fairy tales (nearly) always have a happy ending?

Okay, finances are still a challenge but manageable. Starting from 'absolutely impossible' to todays 'okay let's go' it took life not even half a year to remove all obstacles that I thought were impossible to overcome.
Just to being able to watch life work its magic is a fantastic gift. But I suspect - there's more to come ...

So, if this dream of mine really could come true then it's time to plunge into motivations and expectations.

Why do I want to make this educational trip?

There are of course a lot of good reasons and surely fun is one of them. But apart from all the obvious there is a deeper longing.
As far as I know the telling of stories has been a regular part of social life in the UK and in Ireland far longer than here in Germany. While here it has been reduced to telling of reading fairy tales to kids over there people were telling each other stories wherever they got together.
And was that really the case? Or that a cliché that keeps hanging around here? Or is it maybe still existing reality?

Whatever the answer - I am not after scientific findings. I have a longing for roots. Storytelling-wise. I am yearning for a deeper connection. For an anchor. For something that is hard to put into words.

And the practical side of that?

I'd love to meet storytellers around the country - visit them and chat with them. A standardised interview could be a good start. Maybe one or the other might even be so generous as to give me a story. In any case I'll have the mike at the ready!
And of course I'd love to watch my colleagues work should occasion and timing fit.

I'm interested in how each if them approaches their profession and what it means to him or her.

Storyteller aren't necessarily loners

On most occasions we are alone on stage (whatever form that stage has). There might musicians with us, but other storytellers are rare - where I come from.
And still or maybe because of that the exchange with other storytellers is extremely fruitful, inspiring and helpful. At least it is to me.
I participate regularly in different kind of gatherings, regional and international. And every time I am deeply impressed how much this effects my perception of storytelling and of course my storytelling itself. Everytime I talk with and listen to other storytellers the complexity of this artform and its worth for all of us awestrucks me.

Now imagine two months of personal meetings and one-on-ones. This is extremely exciting!