Mary Medlicott, Storyteller and Author - Storyworks

Read more about me

 
I live in Brixton in South London with my husband Paul whom I met when we were both at Cambridge University. We also spend a lot of time at our home in the village of Mathri in North Pembrokeshire which is my base when I’m working in Wales. Paul works as a public affairs and communication consultant (another form of storytelling!) with his company The Westminster Consortium. We have both worked as journalists in our past and we both sing in choirs – the London Welsh Chorale and, in his case, the BBC Symphony Chorus. We do not have children of our own but we had two long-term foster-sons, Ricky and Mark, and are now foster-grand-parents several times over. We both love walking, books, young people, singing, the theatre, cats and our many friends.
 

Getting going
 
I started storytelling in the early 1980s when I was supposed to be finishing a book I’d been writing about myths and accounts of feral children. While stuck on how to conclude this book, I stumbled across a Storytelling Scheme where I live in Brixton. Run by Lambeth Libraries, the scheme was looking for more storytellers to pay regular visits to local Under-5s groups and entertain older children in holiday times. I felt at once that this was something for me.
 
A hilarious audition led to a small part-time job which I pursued with growing commitment and interest over the next four years. By the time I left to explore new storytelling opportunities, I knew I was far from alone: this thing called storytelling was going on elsewhere too. What has subsequently been recognized as the Great Storytelling Renewal had begun to happen.
 

My new storytelling ventures included my first visits to local schools and, with the support of Lambeth Adult Education, putting on courses and workshops in storytelling. Lambeth's ethnic diversity  together with the resonance and general appeal of storytelling were reflected in the variety of people who attended, all bringing stories from their different backgrounds.
 
These sessions led to further new ventures - training sessions for local authorities all over London, storysharing courses for Asian women in Tooting, storytelling courses for parents in Redbridge and, importantly,  the creative storytelling workshops for adults run with fellow storyteller Karen Tovell at the Drill Hall Arts Centre in Central London and the Holborn Centre for the Performing Arts over the ten-year period from 1986 to 1996.

Developing the work

 

By the mid-80s, the National Oracy Project was drawing attention to how storytelling assists in developing children’s speaking and listening and releasing their creativity. A powerfully innovative force in children’s education, the project provided me with a great deal of employment as well as significant new challenges such as creating techniques for working with children for whom English is a second language and also with very young children. Although the sudden emergence of the National Curriculum and, subsequently, Literacy Hour prevented the Oracy Project’s achievements from coming to full fruition at that time, the experience proved crucially helpful to me and other storytellers in the development of our work.


By Word of Mouth - booklet cover
1990 saw the airing of By Word of Mouth, my four-part TV series on storytelling which I’d proposed to Channel 4 TV. The series was my attempt to show something of the variety and colour of what was by now going on in storytelling in this country. Severe limitations on time and budget meant for instance that no filming could happen outside the London area. But as well as presenting an overview - traditional storytelling for adults, therapeutic storytelling, storytelling in schools – it tried giving a sense of what storytelling means to human beings and the powerful place it has in our lives. The accompanying booklet became Channel 4’s best-selling booklet to that date.

New developments
 

Since 1990, important developments have taken place in the UK storytelling world. One was the formation of the Society for Storytelling in 1993. I have been an active member since its inception. During the period from 1994 to 1996 when I was Deputy Chair and then Chair, I was one of the team that spearheaded a significant Storytelling in Education campaign. This included a document that went out to all schools in the country and a nationwide programme of related events. I also helped initiate the Artisan, Oracle and Papyrus series of booklets which I continue to edit. So far, we have published sixteen booklets on various aspects of storytelling.

Planning Storysharing in Tobago
The development of storytelling as a performance art brought another arena of activity. By now, I have been a guest performer at festivals and clubs throughout the UK and abroad, including the Festival at the Edge in Shropshire, the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in Edinburgh, the Yarnspinners Clubs in Belfast and Dublin, the North Pennines Storytelling Festival, the Bay of Islands Festival in New Zealand, the Glistening Waters International Storytelling Festival in New Zealand, the Baxter Theatre Storytelling Festival in Cape Town and the Tobago Storysharing Festival.
 
During my trips abroad, I have also worked widely with schools, colleges and community groups, including becoming the first woman to speak publicly in the new Maori marae in Rotorua. Other international engagements have included the first performances of a specially commissioned work for choir and storyteller, Lifting the Sky, composed by Victor Davies, with the North American Welsh Choir in the USA.
 
I have performed as storyteller in residence at museums and galleries including the British Museum, the Royal Observatory and Somerset House in London.

I have worked collaboratively with other artists including musician Kathie Prince and painter Catrin Webster. (You can see an account of Catrin's and my Laugharne Boathouse Project click www.oriel.ysgolccc.org.uk/boathouse). I have also toured several one-woman shows including Travels with my Welsh Aunt which is based on the tales and travels of my Aunty Mali (who wasn’t actually a blood relation). My latest show, Shemi’s Tall Tales, tells the stories of Shemi Wâd, the North Pembrokeshire tall-tale teller who died in 1897. 
 
I have also worked as a storytelling consultant and organiser. For instance in 1992 I organised the Barbican’s Fairy Tales weekend, Tender is the North. In 1998 as one of the partners in The Whole Story consultancy with Sally Tonge and Mike Wilson, I set up the week-long Take the Story Trail Festival in Dorset. In 2004 I devised a major storytelling programme for the Rowntree Foundation to celebrate their founder, the philanthropist Joseph Rowntree. With The Whole Story, I have also carried out major consultancies for library authorities and arts organizations on provision of storytelling and storytelling training as well as planning storytelling festivals. More recently, I was one of the Advisory Committee that helped with the formation of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan. 

Storytelling has brought me a number of broadcasting opportunities. My work featured in Common Bonds, the video of the National Oracy Project. My radio programme on storytelling for BBC Wales Education's Fun with Words was broadcast in November 1999. Since the airing of my TV series, By Word of Mouth, I have appeared on BBC TV’s Breakfast News Extra, Film Education’s Mulan – Filming Folktales and in Radio 4’s documentary on Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I am a regular reviewer for School Librarian and have written widely on storytelling. As well as articles for newspapers and magazines including the Times Educational Supplement, Nursery World, Under 5, Early Years Educator, English in Wales, Facts and Fiction Magazine and Storylines, I have written two storytelling books for adults working with children. The Little Book of Storytelling and Cooking Up a Story arose out of my Early Years training work and the latter is now also available in oral form in a CD, Talking Up A Story. My booklet, Tell It, published under my own Storyworks imprint, is a guide to storytelling across the Primary-age range.

Current work

A major aspect of my current work is helping other people - teachers, librarians, nursery staff, parents and other storytellers - to develop their storytelling skills and confidence. In education, I carry out regular storytelling training for a number of organisations including the Institute of Education in London,  the Maria Montessori Training Organisation and a wide range of local authorities including Manchester, Barnet, Croydon, Waltham Forest and Pembrokeshire. I have given storytelling workshops at TES conferences up and down the land and have carried out major Early Years training programmes for Enfield and Merton. I have performed and given seminars at Guardian Education Days. I also work with students, for instance at the University of Warwick. I conduct storytelling workshops at festivals and conferences in England and Wales and often appear as keynote speaker. 
 

My work with schools continues. By today, I have completed dozens of residencies and many hundreds of one-off visits to secondary, primary and nursery schools across England and Wales. Some of the work is straight performance. Some involves workshop activities to develop children's storytelling abilities. All of it encourages children in a love of stories and the creative imagination. I also now work through the medium of Welsh, thus achieving a lifetime ambition after a childhood when, despite understanding and reading the language, I hardly ever spoke it. In Wales, many of the programmes I offer, for instance on local legends, are designed to further the Cwriciwlwm Cymreig and the children's experience of Welsh culture.

Shemi as he really was
The biggest venture in my life since I started storytelling was getting back to creative writing. During the 1990s, I edited several popular anthologies of stories collected from other storytellers (Time for Telling and Tales from Africa). Then in 2003 I published my first children’s novel, Open Secret , which is set in South-West Wales. Elephant Luck, my second children’s novel, travels from my own birthplace in Fishguard to Kenya, the country where I worked as a VSO after leaving school.
 
My latest book, Shemi’s Tall Tales, is my retelling of the stories and life of the tall-tale teller, Shemi Wâd, whom I first learned about from my father. The book has brought together many of the threads in my own life. I take enormous pleasure in telling Shemi’s stories to audiences today and hope that by also writing the book, I have helped him and his stories to come back to life for future generations.

 
© Mary Medlicott & Storyworks 2013 | site by knowHowe Ltd