’Storytelling is an art of performance and community with elements of improvisation and live audience interaction ‘off the page’,’ says Scottish International Storytelling Festival director Donald Smith, by way of explaining how different his event is from a regular literary festival. ‘Most storytellers don’t work from scripted texts but from narrative patterns of sound, shape, form and colour in the imagination.
Started in 1990, the Storytelling Festival, says Smith, is designed to celebrate and bolster the craft of live storytelling – a specific type of performance reading removed from both monologue theatre and straight book reading – and interact with what he calls a global renaissance in the traditional storytelling form. Featuring storytellers from Germany, Portugal, Wales, the Canadian Pacific, Pacific Islands and New Zealand events are aimed at adults, children and families of all ages.
When? Friday 23 - Sunday 30 October, 2016
Who? 2016 TBA
Where? Edinburgh and venues across the Lothians
Festival Website: www.scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk
Tel: 0131 652 3272
Twitter? @ScotStoryCentre
Previous festivals: Founded in 1990
The 2014 theme is ‘Once Upon a Place’, and the aim is to consider ‘our intimate connection with the environment, evoking our shared and creative sense of place.’ Among the further highlights Smith selects from the programme are ‘Tales of a Grandson’, which revisits Scott’s ‘Tales of a Grandfather’ in ‘reimagining Scotland’s history as the peoples’ story rather than just Kings, Queens, empires and battles, and the site-specific ‘Storytelling for a Greener World’ series at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
2014 ONLINE PROGRAMME PREVIEW (PDF 1.52mb)
Where better to experience this art than in Scotland, the ancient home of storytelling, and of Celtic hospitality. Sit at the hearth of stories and be transported into other worlds. The 2012 Scottish International Storytelling Festival celebrates the art and humanity of folktales across Europe, tracing the way in which the publication of the Brothers Grimm Tales 200 years ago, sparked a revival of interest in nations and regions across the continent and influenced every artform. Today storytelling itself is once again flourishing across Europe and the Festival offers an unrivalled opportunity to hear the best of the wordspinners to meet storytellers from Scottish and European traditions to participate in workshops and international networking, and if you wish, to travel on to regions of Scotland where traditional arts continue to thrive.
2012 Programme
2011 Theme; An Island Odyssey: Scotland & Old Europe
"Odysseus had finally arrived home. After traversing the Mediterranean, meeting every kind of god and monster, he came home to the lovely and long-suffering Penelope, killed the wannabe suitors, was reunited with his son and then …Then he got bored. So he set out again on his travels but this time Odysseus went through the Straits of Gibraltar and headed north …His adventures had only just begun.'
The 2011 Scottish International Storytelling Festival unites the shores and islands of the Mediterranean world and those of Scotland, as Odysseus reaches this ancient home of storytelling.
Old routes are reconnected, navigating by song, stories and music. Celtic meets Mediterranean as the myths of Greece and Rome and those of the north mix in a new Olympic contest. And the contestants -the connector- are the wandering bards, storytellers and minstrels.
If you are involved in this festival you can update or change details via the organisers page . Authors can list here.