What have I been up to recently? Well, having had a baby in May, not a huge am0unt, but I’m gradually re-entering the world again:
York Festival of Storytelling, Friends Meeting House, 3rd-4th February 2012. See http://www.whatsonyork.com/EventDetails.cfm?EventDetailID=25613 for a full programme of what was a wonderful event. It was an honour to perform there along with some of the region’s best storytellers. Congratulations to organiser Helen Sant, with whom I shared a show, Wild Women, about a soulless hunter whose attempts to steal both the tales and the tails of animals he encounters around the world fall foul of the goddesses above. This gave us a chance to introduce the audience to four goddesses – feisty, naive, guilty and innocent – and I felt quite drained afterwards! I really hope we can perform this show again sometime.
Helen and I performing 'Wild Women' in an atmospherically darkened room!
Storytelling for Scientists – recently I have acquired an interesting sideline in helping the very talented science writer Kate Ravilious teach PhD students how to improve their science writing. All writing, all texts, all human learning, is essentially narrative – and to be memorable and compelling, it must be structured as such. I am ‘pet storyteller’ in these sessions. I tell two stories based on scientific fact – one (I hope) well, one very badly. The participants must identify the differences, and decide how the second one could be retold.
Mashamshire Arts Festival, Hackfall Woods, 24th Oct 2011 – I led a very enthusiastic group of adults and children around the mysteries and romance of Hackfall, just outside Masham. Here we all are:
And here you get a bit of the atmosphere!:
A new activity to try in Hackfall is ‘geoartcaching’ – if you don’t have a fancy phone with GPS, just look for the beautiful bird-sized follies built to match the 18th century human-sized castles and temples all over the woods:
Wild About Wood Festival, Castle Howard Arboretum, September 2012 – Despite horrific weather warnings, yet another gorgeous autumn celebration of our relationship with wood. The atmosphere at this festival is utterly different from most family events, far from the consumerist and frenetic spirit of ‘am I missing something?’ – adults and children alike join in actively and learn about the ecology and uniqueness of this arboretum by pond-dipping, going mammal-hunting, learning to make fire, worm-charming, many other activities, and of course, coming story-walking with me…
Galtres Festival, Crayke, August 2011
Family fun and fitness day, Malton, 6th August 2011 – Everyone was involved was disappointed that the weather forced a relocation – away from the beautiful Castle Gardens, with its romantic history and gorgeous ancient trees, to an indoor venue. However, a jolly good time really was had by all. In between enthusiastically attended storytelling sessions I could watch people try out zumba, tai chi, some kind of turbo-skipping and high-energy dance classes.
York Viking Festival, February 2011 – One of my favourite gigs. The Viking Festival audience have high expectations, come in large numbers and ready to join in. From blood-thirsty to heart-rending, the Viking myths are not part of my usual repertoire, but I always enjoy sprucing them up for the Festival.
Outdoor crafts and storytelling for parents and children at Tang Hall Primary School, Jan-Feb 2011, York. This six-week series of after-school storytelling sessions has been a joy so far, despite the chilly January weather. All credit to parents who take the time and energy to play and be with their children in the outdoors in every season of the year!
Narnia Day, York ‘Explore’ (library), 30th January 2011. See my post on this wonderful day!
‘WILD ABOUT WOOD’ FESTIVAL, CASTLE HOWARD ARBORETUM, 11th and 12th September 2010. This was the second year of this delightful festival for families, and let me assure you there is nowhere nicer to spend a day or two in early autumn. All kinds of unusual ‘woody’ experiences were available: riding a coracle, walking with a cart horse, archery, carving, spotting lichens, visiting green woodworkers….also great music and nice food…and I had a great time telling stories of trees. The festival is on again the same time next year: see www.wildaboutwood.org
School visits occupied a great part of Spring 2010, much to my delight. Some of these were to assist schools involved in the York Schools’ Drama Festival, whose theme this year was ‘Tall Tales’ and traditional storytelling. The final performances (all 21 of them!) were a tour de force and an astonishingly enjoyable weekend! Almost all of them truly reflected the theme of going ‘back to basics’ – to the roots of theatre, which is of course the telling of stories. They were direct and energetic and often very moving, or in some cases, very witty.
Others were eco-storytelling days – I went to Great Eccleston, near Preston, to the tiny primary school of St Mary’s, and spent the first day of spring with its two classes, ‘the littlies’ and ‘the biggies’. We roamed in a thicket, gathered treasures to make a sculpture of a magic garden, played and sang music, produced a performance of the tale of the original Chipko ‘treehuggers’, drew trees from our imaginations with as much detail as we could summon, compared them with real trees, and generally revelled in it.
Another two wonderful spring days in Clifton with Rawcliffe Primary School here in York, which was holding a Sustainability Fortnight. The Infants site glories in a ‘Forest Schools’ area which was the ideal setting for stories of homes and habitats – being itself the perfect habitat for children. There were some 80 frogs doing their business, as it were, in the pond. Meanwhile the Foundation Stage children heard the story of Tom Badger and created wonderful colourful woodland homes for the animals in the story; Key Stage 1 children heard the true tale of Mercedes the Polar Bear, and became deeply absorbed for quite some time in jointly turning her enclosure into an ideal habitat, using what they had available. Again much singing, music and joyfulness. It was amazing how up to 90 children could fit harmoniously in that small space, exploring the possibilities of every nook and cranny.
On the Juniors site, I told the true story of William Kambkwamba to Year 5 & 6, and tales and poetry of rainforests to Year 3 & 4. They created some lovely drama and memorised the poem to give a compelling class performance.
The Speakers’ Corner, Yorkshire Terrier pub, York, 9th Dec 2009. I was honoured to be offered the guest slot at this monthly gathering of poets, comedians and monologuists. They have often been a great inspiration to me with their thoughtful work, and I hope storytelling and poetry need never be too far apart from each other. I did a half-hour ‘show’ called ‘Unharvested’, based on the Robert Frost poem of the same name. Many of the stories I tell essentially come back to this idea: that something must always be left unharvested, so as to leave a space for nature and everything we still don’t understand about it. This meant tackling the ‘tour de force’ of the story of the Greek goddess Demeter – luckily I had a pint on hand for moral support!
A Green Christmas, North York Moors National Park, 5th Dec 2009. Another very enjoyable day at the Sutton Bank visitors’ centre, entertaining groups of families with wintry stories, many with an eco-twist to them.
Twilight Training Session, 2nd Dec 2009, for York teachers in preparation for the York Schools Drama Festival in March. The festival’s theme for this year is ‘Tall Tales’, so the excellent Colin Jackson of York Council invited me to give the teachers a bit of a whistle-stop tour of storytelling. And how to turn it into drama. Well, I tell you, you don’t need to do or say much to get 30 drama teachers cavorting around and entering very fully into the fun of a thing. What an afternoon. But I think I did convince them that they (or their pupils) can memorise a quite complicated tale, quite easily, and turn it into the framework of a group performance. Lots of nice feedback from the teachers, which I was very pleased with.
Tales of Hackfall: a 21st century Grand Tour, 28th November 2009, Hackfall Woods, Grewelthorpe, near Ripon. This enchanting history-soaked wood, full of 18th century ‘ruins’ and ‘follies’, waterfalls that aren’t, wells that petrify, and a rich, dense ecology, has been a crucial part of locals’ lives for centuries. See my post for more about it. I led a muddy story walk for families to discover some of its secrets, and in the evening another group of locals gathered round the fire in the local pub to share their own stories of Hackfall. Well done to Paul Mosley, Hackfall Officer for the Woodland Trust, for organising the day. You can hear podcasts of stories by both me and local people at this link.
Culture and Identity Day at York High School, 10th November 2009. All of Year 9 came off timetable for an intensive day learning about Tanzanian culture (as they have a partner school in Tanzania) as well as their own, through a spectrum of art forms: dance, textiles, languages, drama and of course storytelling. I worked with two groups of pupils on various generations of stories in East African culture: origin myths, folktales, and true stories of innovative, heroic behaviour in the present day. There was some really great work and I was both surprised and delighted by how attentively the pupils listened to stories told to them, despite the subject matter seeming very distant from their own existence at times. Well done to Stephen Burke, artist in residence at the school, for organising a great day.
Tales of Transformation – for dark nights and bright beginnings, 31st Oct 2009, York Central Library
The Library – shock horror – is now closed for the entire winter, for refurbishment and transformation into an ‘Explore’ Centre. Halloween night was its last night open to the public – people could take out as many books as they liked (and they did!), drink hot chocolate, look at the staff in fab witch costumes, and….listen to me storytelling. I was very honoured to take part in this evening as it was, in fact, a sort of ritual to say a temporary goodbye to the Library, which is an important part of many people’s daily lives.
Halloween was the perfect symbolic time to do this. It used to be the Celtic New Year’s Eve, the night before the ‘winter half’ of the year, the beginning of the three days when the souls of the dead hover nearer than at any other time and we remember them. It also helps us gird our loins for a bit of an ordeal – the long dark winter – and reminds us that we will come out the other side having learnt something.
So I told the story of Brigid going down into the mountain of the Death Hag, and returning with the seeds of life and ending the Ice Age…the story of the Tiddy Mun, and how the people of the Lincolnshire Carrs lost him and then found him again…the melodramatic but entertaining rhyming epic by Robert Service, ‘The Cremation of Sam Magee’, which in its own way treats the subject of honouring the dead. And we finished up with a little ‘Day of the Dead’ ceremony of our own, where people made effigies of dead people they remembered out of apples, cloves and twigs, and introduced them to the rest of us. I must say, the adults in the evening session greatly exceeded the children in their enthusiasm for this (because children often don’t know any dead people) and it was quite moving in the end. Thanks to Alison Jones at York Library – and see you in the spring!
Here I am with two of the apple effigies!
York Festival of Storytelling, 18th October 2009, York Steiner School.
Well, after many months of preparation, the time finally came and we really did have a great day. See post on front page for details. On this page I will show you a bit of what went into the setting up:
Thanks to the York St John Drama students who gave up an entire Saturday to help us decorate the venue for the Festival
Our decoration team created this wonderful chill-out space for people to relax or have pillow fights between shows
Mary Passeri did her very own set-up in the school garden - and 50-plus kids and parents sat out there even when it started to rain, they were so enthralled!
And here I am enjoying a moment in the main performance space...feeling like a fairy queen...
Culture Group at Haxby Road Family Learning Centre, 15th and 22nd October 2009
I spent two afternoons with this group, which is an essential resource for women who have moved to York from other countries and cultures – they get together once a week to chat, craft, give each other advice, practise their English. Thanks to the Learning Revolution grant which allowed storytellers from the York Festival of Storytelling to lead workshops in community groups – and this was my turn.
The first week, it took a little while for the group to understand my ‘trade’ and why I was visiting them. I told a story or two and they listened as best they could with variable English knowledge and children tearing around the room at top speed! One Korean lady told me an origin myth from her culture, that she remembered being told as a child. In recent decades, she said, it is Western fairy tales and picture books that are read into children – the rich oral heritage is fading out of memory a little.
The second week, I came prepared with lots of visual props to assist everyone’s understanding. I made a fool of myself with some Halloween customs and the group helped me tell an African ghost story together, with great drama and some beautifully drawn puppets! (see below) A Turkish lady told us all some stories from her religion and culture (and allowed me to adopt them into my repertoire – thank you!) and we had a very interesting discussion about religions represented in the group.
Some of the group holding the 'bush spirits' they made for an African ghost story
I was most delighted when they told me I could come back any time I wanted, and again the following week when one family from the group turned up at another of my shows! The group coordinator later wrote,
“the parents loved it as well as the children that attended the group. Some of the parents were telling her stories from back home. It was a really lovely activity to do.”
‘Wild About Wood’ Festival, Castle Howard Arboretum, 12th and 13th September 2009
What a fantastic weekend. Around 2000 people came along to enjoy horse pole logging, sail coracles, build with oak, climb tall trees, practise their archery, watch chainsaw sculpture, learn woodland crafts and of course listen to my stories. I was in my element, telling my favourite tall tree tales and some juicy bits of Irish mythology. Both children and adults were also intrigued by my new workshop on Ogham – the ancient language of trees – and by the chance to find their own birthday tree. They learned to write inscriptions in Ogham and hid messages for each other along the trail of our story walks. Congratulations to all at the Arboretum who organised this great event.
Children learning how to write the ancient script of trees
The Arboretum was an atmospheric location for tales of weary travellers making their way through the woods...
North York Moors Eco Day, Sutton Bank Visitors Centre, 29 July 2009
We are tilting at windmills...
My sometimes partner-in-crime Anneliese Emmans Dean and I had another fine day out, this time at the North York Moors National Park Visitors’ Centre. A host of organisations were out in force providing eco-entertainment of all kinds. I really enjoyed leading some very enthusiastic participants on story walks around the centre’s grounds, discovering the stories behind bilberries, dry stone walls, oak apples, and willow trees as we went (these are some of my favourite things!) See my post on the Broguey Stone on the front page of the blog.
Meanwhile, Anneliese taught her mini-musical ‘Compost!’ to two incredibly enthusiastic groups of adults and children. I have seen many groups perform this now, but never with such zeal and panache as today.
‘Raucous Rhymes and Wonder Tales: Childhood across the centuries’, Anneliese Emmans Dean and Catherine Heinemeyer, Jacob’s Well, York, 14th March 2009
An exploration of childhood that’s not just for children – an event in the York Literature Festival that’s not just for adults. That was the idea and so many people came to the cosy and atmospheric little building off Micklegate that we worried we wouldn’t fit them all in! I hope the children squashed at the front managed to forget their stiff legs as they listened to my stories and Anneliese’s poems about children ‘just like them’. All ages joined in with great enthusiasm with ballad-singing, with the refrain of a poem about a neglected child, and with even greater aplomb, in storytelling themselves, using a ‘magic basket’ of props.
Anneliese and I by the fireside in Jacob's Well
Spring Story Walk, West Bank Park, York, 28th February 2009
Well, having said all that, you can have your fancy historic venues – I could quite happily stick to West Bank Park! Quite a crowd turned up on a beautiful early spring day for a mystery tour of the Park. For a start, we were blessed with the sight of the frogs spawning in the wildlife pond. From there we moved on to the woods for stories of Demeter’s sacred groves and how the spring came about (according to the ancient Greeks), Green Men and the Green Children of Suffolk, and St Kevin and the Blackbird (see post). The Very Young Friends of West Bank Park were among the crowd and told their own story of planting daffodils, and adult member Rosemary Downey told the story of how the woodpecker saved the other birds of the forest from the sparrowhawk. Finally, Margaret Weeden of the Friends of the Park told us how the Friends saved part of the Park from development 15 years ago, an inspiring story to hear.
Photos due any day now!
Stories at the Mill, Holgate Windmill, 31st January 2009
I don’t think I’ll ever again get to perform in such a setting: the second floor of a Georgian windmill in the process of restoration, on a cold, windy night, but all cosy inside with fairy lights, lanterns, bunches of lavendar and steaming hot punch. People sitting in sleeping bags in a circle (obviously!) all around the edge of the room, children lying on cushions and rugs on the floor and gazing up in rapt attention. Guitar music from local classical guitarist Toby Wardman, ghost stories of the mill itself, poems for everyone to participate in, and some stories from me of mills in the past, and how they were entwined with history. For once it was a folktale-free zone; OK, I was embroidering a little, but windmills have been the scene of such drama that I could rely on true stories. The Great Flour Revolts of Suffolk in the 1790s, the windmill cat that saved the miller’s baby daughter from drowning in a flood on the north coast of Holland in the 1480s, how windmills conquered the West, and the adventures of a miller in my own ‘ancestral home’ on the Lecale Peninsula in Northern Ireland….
The mill restoration is a fascinating project – see www.holgatewindmill.org.uk to follow its progress. By next year it might be grinding flour!
Science Day, Marton-cum-Grafton Primary School, 21st November 2008
I have spent a wonderful day in the company of some of the brightest and liveliest 4-7-year-olds I have met in a long time. The small village school of Marton-cum-Grafton was off-timetable today for a day of environmental science, Key Stage 2 concentrating on renewable energy and water, while Key Stage 1 learnt about recycling through storytelling and art. NYBEP (the North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership) had organised a set of workshops for each, so six of us descended upon the school at 9am.
My workshop was based on one of my first self-written stories, ‘Journey to the Compost Kingdom’. After warming up our storytelling muscles by inventing tall tales about how we got to school this morning, I told them the story of the happy Compost Kingdom, with its Compost King, Compost Queen and Mighty Heap right in the centre of the land. The dramatic tale of how a successor is found for the childless King and Queen unrolls: a proclamation is issued that whomsoever brings the finest present for the Mighty Heap shall be the next ruler. The Princes and Princesses of the Land of Moneybags try and fail; so too do the Businesspeople of the City of Wastealot. It is some poor children who have nothing but the scraps from their garden and kitchen who eventually win the coveted garland….
Clearly there are some meaty roles here for the whole class, so much dressing-up and practising ensued. Each child had to make up their own part of the story: where their present had come from and why it was the best one for the Mighty Heap. I really was impressed by the children’s gusto as they performed the story, and the fact that they kept performing it in the playground at breaktime.
After lunch they made some very imaginative puppets out of ‘a load of old rubbish’, which tested my gluing and cutting skills to their outer limits.
Thanks to the school and to NYBEP (www.nybep.org.uk) for yet another stimulating day.
Transition Stories, York Steiner School, 14th November 2008
The ‘Transition York’ project – or should I say, movement – is getting into its stride. How York could ease its transition to a world post-oil, post-consumerism is surely the question that should dominate every council meeting. The themes of building community capacity, developing local resources, remembering the alternatives to shopping, and finding a workable relationship with nature are all part of the Transition movement. And of course, storytelling, in my view, is part of the answer to all of them!
So when I was asked to do some ‘eco-storytelling’ at a twilight event at York Steiner School, where parents and children were invited to hear about Transition York, I jumped at the chance. Steiner children are storytelling connoisseurs so I was a little nervous. However, I think the arresting story of Demeter and Eresychthon, along with my current favourite ‘Baglan and the Tree with 3 Fruits’, were both highly relevant to the theme as well as holding people’s attention. The adults then broke off to discuss matters a bit more formally. Among the 45-ish attenders, there was considerable interest in involving the school more deeply in Transition York.
See transitiontowns.org/York for more information about the initiative.
‘Inspire’, York Observatory, Museum Gardens, 31st October 2008
What an honour to be asked to perform on Halloween night, at one of eight venues in the city where atmospheric performances in different artforms were being conducted. Each performance – whether dance, storytelling, music or drama – was 15 minutes long, with breaks in between for the audience to promenade to their next venue. Helen Sant, Adrian Spendlow and I were the storytellers for the Observatory ‘show’, whose theme was ‘Medieval Monsters and a Sense of Belief’. So I chose stories about dragons – the medieval, gruesome, serpent-like kind – bog spirits and a few early saints with their knack for enchanting others.
This event is part of the ‘Illuminating York’ festival, and the whole city was infused with buzz and excitement. People were smiling at each other in the streets. It was lovely to be a part of it.
I was trying to get them to see that this was not a stick but a brass-handled crook!John Cossham (aka Professor Fiddlesticks) in the St Nick
For more information on St Nick’s, see www.stnicksfields.org.uk
York Green Festival, Rowntree Park, 31st August 2008
York Green Festival is a truly brilliant event organised by a team of volunteers each year. On either side of me were people doing yoga and recycling plastic into angels. At the other end of the Park was a solar-powered cinema (Kinotastic) and several music and dance stages. In between were craft and philosophy workshops, Transition Town ideas boards, clothes swap areas, and stalls for dozens of local organisations.
My storytelling session was well attended and enthusiastically ‘participated-in’ when called for. It’s always a challenge to pick stories that challenge and entertain adults and older children, but won’t frighten or confuse younger ones. But time and again I am surprised how different age groups get different things from the same, apparently simple, story.
See http://www.myspace.com/yorkgreenfestival for more about this festival, held every summer.
Conor, aged 4, often acts as my sidekick on these occasions
Helmsley Green Day, Helmsley Walled Garden, 16th August 2008
The team at Helmsley Walled Garden have a strong commitment to public education on sustainability issues and to that end they organise a Green Day each year. Marquees and stalls were erected in all sorts of quaint corners, behind topiary, in ‘secret gardens’, greenhouses and so on. I set up against a hedge in the Secret Garden and parents and children drifted over to me in small groups. It was lovely to tell stories to just a few at a time, so as to be able to choose just the right one for them. One little girl made me a tile from papier mache – one of the neighbouring craft activities – to show her appreciation – thank you!
See www.helmsleywalledgarden.org.uk for details of their activities.
Copmanthorpe Primary School Environment Market, June 2008
This school and its head, Miss Judith Rigg, are very keen on spreading ecological awareness not only to pupils but also to parents and the wider community. They organised a Market Day with recycled toys, real nappies, fairly traded foods, organic homegrown veg, and all the rest of it. I was invited along to sit in their amphitheatre (yes, really) in the school gardens and tell stories about nature and the environment to groups of parents and children. It was lovely to have such a location, underneath a Copper Beech tree. I decorated the amphitheatre with sprays of foliage from all the different tree species that featured in the stories I was going to tell – they have all those species at Copmanthorpe Primary! I was particularly pleased at the group of Year 6 girls who came back several times, looking a bit less sceptical each time. The girls particularly enjoyed ‘Sedna and King Gull’ – an Inuit story in which the young girl is the courageous one who teaches her people how to look after the creatures of the sky and sea. Anneliese Emmans Dean was also present, doing performances of her creepy-crawly extravaganza ‘It’s Buzzing’ for the market-browsers, and she too reported enthusiastic crowds! See www.copmanthorpeprimary.co.uk for more about this forward-thinking school.
Story Walk, West Bank Park, York, 2nd February 2008
At the parent and toddler group I co-ordinate, ‘based’ in the woods and meadows of West Bank Park, there are a number of talented storytellers among the parents, grandparents and childminders who bring their charges along. Therefore we decided to organise a Story Walk around the Park on 2nd Feb – also known as Candlemas, or Imbolc, the festival of the end of midwinter, the appearance of the first bulbs etc. We also invited local poet of minibeasts Anneliese Emmans Dean, and Margaret Weeden of the Friends of West Bank Par, to contribute their own stories. Here I am regaling everyone with a swamp story – at the edge of the rather swampy pond in the Park (it has since been redug and lined, don’t worry!).
And here are some of the children investigating one of the stories more deeply:
See westbankparkkids.blogspot.com for details of our toddler group, the Very Young Friends of West Bank Park.
