‘Raucous Rhymes and Wonder Tales’ at Pocklington Arts Centre and ‘Stomping through the Seasons’ at York Literature Festival 2010

Storytelling and poetry-loving families will have two chances to see poet Anneliese Emmans Dean and I performing joint shows over the next couple of months.  Both are aimed as much as adults as at children, and aim to bring the generations together for some whole-hearted literary fun.

Anneliese Emmans Dean

1) Following last year’s sell-out performance, we will be reprising ‘Raucous Rhymes and Wonder Tales’ – this time at Pocklington Arts Centre, on Sunday 7th Feb 2010.  This show is a celebration of childhood, across the centuries and around the world. Whether you are a child yourself, or just eternally youthful, come along and enjoy the antics and adventures of children of all sorts: rich and poor, happy and sad, mad and bad.  We will journey from the sublime to the ridiculous with fun poems and magical stories, and you may find yourself joining in….

When?   Sunday 7th February 2010, 6:30-8pm

Whom for?  Adults and children aged 6+

Where?  Pocklington Arts Centre

How much? Adults £5, children £2

To book: www.pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk

Click on the link to see the Raucous Rhymes Pocklington Flyer

2) On Sat 27th March, Anneliese and I will be premiering a brand new show for families as part of the 2010 York Literature Festival .  This year’s show is ‘Stompin’ through the Seasons’ – a feast of poetry, storytelling and….shoemaking!  Yes, we will have a real live shoemaker getting on with his business while we lead you through the seasons of the year in rhyme and story, with a special focus on footwear!  Jacob’s Well is a gorgeous, intimate, atmospheric and friendly venue and there will be refreshments on the house in the interval.

When?      Sat 27th March, 6:30 – 8pm

Who for? Adults and children aged 5+

Where?    Jacob’s Well, off Micklegate, York

How much? £5 adults, £2.50 children

Bring:       a special/favourite pair of shoes/boots

To book: contact me on catherine.heinemeyer@googlemail.com or 01904 612418

A very storied wood

Telling the myth of Diarmuid and Grainne in the stunningly appropriate situation of Fisher's Hall, Hackfall Woods. Copyright: Hackfall Woods, Photgraphed/edited by Kate Measures Consulting

With my colleague, 6-year-old Conor, who had just made his storytelling debut in front of Mowbray Hall. Copyright: Hackfall Woods, Photographed and edited by Kate Measures Consulting

Stopping by Fountain's Pond to hear audience members' own tales of Hackfall. Copyright: Hackfall Woods, Photgraphed and edited by Kate Measures Consulting

At the end of November I went to Hackfall Woods for a truly fascinating day of storytelling and story-gathering.  In the afternoon, leading families around the woods and all their 18th century ‘follies’, I was primarily doing the telling, but in the evening I met with locals who knew the woods and their history inside out.  I sat more or less spellbound for a couple of hours by the fire in the local pub (The Crown Inn at Grewelthorpe, highly to be recommended!!!) listening to tales of schoolboy trespassing and pranks on the warden, drownings, brutish logging, horseracing intrigue, Sunday School Treats and much much more!  Thankfully all of this has been recorded on tape for posterity.  Thank you to Paul Mosley of the Woodland Trust for organising a really brilliant day, and to all participants for being such excellent listeners and tellers.

I will be back in Hackfall Woods in the Easter holidays (probably 9th and 10th April) for some family exploration days, which will also involve other artforms and activities as well as storytelling.

The Age of Stupid

I have just watched this tremendous documentary (about climate change, seen from the perspective of a crisis survivor in 2055) on BBC i-player.  I justify including a mention of this in my storytelling blog because it tells a very complex and terrifying story in a way that enables you to look it in the eye and feel it in your heart, without making you want to shrink away.  Quite an achievement – when one of everyone’s main occupations these days is denying, over-simplifying, minimising or ignoring this thing (and I include myself in this).

Maybe one of the best proofs I have had for a long time of storytelling’s unique power to approach trauma obliquely and allow us to explore it with an open heart.  To break down our everyday defences against the truth.  The documentary sees climate change through the eyes of six or seven inhabitants of Planet Earth in our current decade, each living out their own stories and telling them eloquently.  Some are suffering the consequences of climate change, some are making matters worse, indeed most are doing both these things.  One doesn’t feel moved to judge but to act.

The question for me is then: how can I use stories to help people come to terms with climate change?  Without preaching or judging or bringing people to despair, I mean.  That’s the thought I am taking to bed tonight.

First storytelling club meeting in York!

Thanks to the sterling efforts of the new team at the Yorkshire Hussar pub, and two fine local storytellers Mary Passeri and Helen Sant, we SHALL go the ball….or rather, the pub, for the first of what we hope will be a long series of monthly storytelling circle gatherings.

Get your diary ready for here are the details: Thurs 26th November, 8pm, Yorkshire Hussar pub, North Street, York.  Bring a few pence (even a pound or two) for the donations box, but more importantly, a story to share – although enthusiastic listeners are just as welcome.  The pub is laying on candlelight and mulled wine to oil the creative wheels.  We shall see you there!

Here's the poster!

Storytelling in York is in the ascendant

Well, the festival is over.  It was, I think we can say, a success.  The people came, they heard, they enjoyed, they joined in and were often thoroughly surprised.  The kids survived until bedtime and beyond and amazed us with their desire to hear yet another story, and then another.  The storytellers gave it their all and then some.  The outreach work it generated (thanks to support from the Learning Revolution in Yorkshire and the Humber) brought some unexpected gifts, both to the storytellers and the community groups involved.

It was a tremendous amount of work for all involved and so many people deserve hearty thanks that I won’t even go into it here.  Now comes a time for reflection and consideration of our options for the future.  ‘York Storytelling’ is now open for business and wants to move forward, but the question is how?  Another festival this time next year?  Possibly.   And other exciting side-shoots: the Yorkshire Hussar pub has offered us a free and welcoming, candlelit venue for a regular storytelling circle…the Forest of Galtres Festival is interested in collaborating with us…we could become bedfellows with the wonderful York Literature Festival…we could work with the council on storytelling shows and workshops….we could move the festival into different venues around the city next year…

So keep your eyes peeled for news on the storytelling front in York.  There will certainly be exciting developments to observe and take part in.

Nation’s first Storytelling Laureate coming to York!

In the hurly-burly of organising the York Festival of Storytelling (only two weeks to go!), I have the impression that it is becoming the centre of the universe, and hear storytelling mentioned wherever I go.  Yet it must seem frustrating to more seasoned storytellers than myself that storytelling has remained a fairly marginalised artform.  Too many people still categorise it as an activity for children and/or librarians.  And I too have had the experience of sitting in my ’story tent’ at festivals or events, with anyone but parents of toddlers walking straight past me.  Many fine tellers have been working for decades to remind the world that we all need, live, breathe, thrive on stories, think in stories, learn from and laugh at stories.

Thus it warms my cockles to hear that the great Taffy Thomas MBE has just been appointed the nation’s first ever Storytelling Laureate .  About time.  And they couldn’t have chosen a better man for the job.  Taffy’s witty, wise, unassuming and generous style, his ability to make all his listeners consider themselves as potential storytellers, his sense of theatre when called for, all qualify him richly for the role.

And of course this makes me even more delighted that Taffy will be performing at the York Festival of Storytelling.  (It’s on Sunday 18th October, in case you’re wondering).  We are getting our pound of flesh out of him – as well as a performance with his ‘Tale Coat’, he will also be giving a workshop to help parents tell stories to their own children, and taking part in our evening concert.

Congratulations Taffy, and see you soon!

York Festival of Storytelling gathers pace

The first ever York Festival of Storytelling has now got its own rather comprehensive website: www.yorkstorytelling.co.uk – where you can read full listings of performances and workshops and find out what on earth motivated us to get it started.  By hook or by crook, it is going to be a wonderful, intense and enjoyable day for childlike adults, children and old cynics alike.

Looking for the stories

In a few weeks (12th-13th Sept) I will be involved in what is shaping up to be a really wonderful event, the Wild About Wood festival at the Castle Howard Arboretum.  So I paid a visit there, partly to explore what trees and habitats will be at my disposal for storywalks and inspiration, and partly to be in some publicity shots for the event.  A lot of employees’ and sponsors’ children were also prevailed upon to come along for a sneak preview and smile for the camera!

Investigating the arboretum's sundial

In the outdoor classroom

Unlike some events of this nature, which purport to educate but really only aim to entertain and bring the punters in, this festival looks like it is really going to have some depth to it.  By the sheer variety of woodland crafts being demonstrated, and the different ways of interacting with wood – climbing a tall tree, riding in a coracle boat, going on a woodland story walk, writing their name in the ancient script of trees (Ogham), trying out tools on different kinds of wood – people will learn through all their senses!

See www.wildaboutwood.org to learn more!

Late summer and the hills are alive…

I arrived for a day’s storytelling at the North York Moors Visitors Centre at Sutton Bank about 20 hours after arriving back from holiday in Shropshire, and felt slightly catapulted back into performing mode.  I had some stories ready about the local area, but felt a bit unarmed nonetheless – I didn’t know the area personally too well.

However, I took my first group of the day out for a story walk in the grounds of the centre.  There were bilberries ripe all over the place, oak apples on all the tree, fragments of dry stone wall and horses grazing, thickets of wood and wild raspberries…we didn’t get more than about 100 metres along the path in 45 minutes, as there was a story ready to pounce at each bend it took.  The children gingerly tasted bilberries and were amazed to hear that for many Shropshire children, picking those berries all summer was the only way they could afford school books and clothes in the 19th century.

Anneliese and I kept thinking this kilnman was real and saying 'Excuse me' as we walked past him!

Another story that sprang to mind was that of the Broguey Stone on the Lecale Peninsula, near where I come from in Northern Ireland:

The Broguey Stone

In pre-Christian times and long beyond them, chiefs and kings in Ireland used to be sworn in not by the Bible, but by a sacred stone.  With one foot on the stone they would pledge their loyalty to the people they were to rule – and in fact the stones themselves were often in the shape of a foot or shoe.  This was certainly the case in the Lecale – the rulers of this area swore on a stone which was naturally, yet uncannily, similar to a shoe or ‘brogue’. Having one foot on a sacred stone, it was believed, kept them safe from the draining energies of the Earth, and gave them some of the wisdom and powers of the gods.

As the centuries passed this custom faded and most people forgot what the stone had been used for, but they still felt they ought not to move it from its place.  It was still worthy of respect, it must be lucky, it must have to do with the fairies, or something….until, a century or two ago, it lay in the middle of a farmer’s field.  He had to plough in awkward circles around it, but neither he nor any of his neighbours did anything to disturb it.

Until, that is, his land was bought by a younger, wealthier neighbour.  The day before he left his farm he asked some friends to come and help him ’shift the old stone’.  And they hefted it between them to the dry stone wall surrounding the field, and slotted it into a gap made by an old gate.  They didn’t trust the new farmer, you see.  And as the years passed the moss grew on the strangely-shaped Broguey Stone as it sat in the wall, and people forgot it had ever been in the field.

The old farmer grew even older and as he chatted with his friends in the pub or in his kitchen at nights they used to discuss how they would, before they died, raise a fine concrete plinth and have the Broguey Stone placed on it for all to see, with an inscription.   As the old man grew sick and frail he made one of his friends swear to have this done for him after he was gone.  And the friend swore (although probably not with his foot on the Broguey Stone – but who knows?).

However, as the old farmer lay in bed and felt death was drawing near he called for his friend and said, “Do you know, I’ve been thinking – I think we’ll leave that stone where it is – it looks just fine there.”  And his friend agreed, and the stone is still there today, with no memorial except the patterns of the moss, and no plinth except the other old stones of the very old wall.

Storytelling around the fire

This is the archetypal storytelling situation: family and friends gathered together around a fire of an evening, and the most natural thing in the world is for someone to give the others a story.  The problem is, there aren’t a lot of outdoor fires these days – and when they happen, most people are too shy to even consider trying to ‘entertain’ the others.

So thanks and praise to my friends Stephan and Tatjana, who invited my family and me round for a midsummer fire last weekend (well alright, to be honest, we invited ourselves), and between grilling sausages and starting on the marshmallows, Stephan just started a story without any pomp.  Just like the man in this poster, he casually conjured up dervishes and bandits and magic coffee cups.  We all listened in that sort of semi-trance state one can get into sometimes, and then I added one of my own afterwards.

For all my efforts to be a ‘real’ storyteller, I still find it very hard to find these ‘natural’ openings in everyday life, as presumably my great-great-grandparents would have been able to do.  I hope I will learn, because I see that as one of the main roles of the new storytelling movement, to reintroduce these moments of real listening and contact and imagination into the everyday.

In the meantime, we have to contrive these situations.  That’s why a bonfire is going to be a major centrepiece of the York Festival of Storytelling on Sun 18th October (see the poster artwork above).  Plus a lot of ’storyround’ open mic sessions (without a mic) where people will get a few minutes to contribute their own tale.   The plans are coming on rightly – I will keep you posted, and very soon the festival’s own website www.yorkstorytelling.co.uk will be up and running.