Memorable tellings are never forgotten. Next week on Wednesday will be the 14th anniversary of such a telling of a story by Eleanor Farjeon, Elsie Piddock Skips In Her Sleep. The telling was by Eileen Colwell.

Among other things, Eileen Colwell was:

• founder of the first children’s library in the UK
• first patron of the Society for Storytelling
• an oral storyteller par excellence

Eileen was also a storytelling inspiration to me and huge numbers of others. I was thinking about her this week on two separate occasions, once in connection with the TV series on storytelling, By Word of Mouth, which I originated and devised back in 1989. The series was shown on Channel 4 in 1990 and I’ve just had some DVD transfers of it made from the videos of it that I possess. Eileen Colwell figures prominently in the third programme in the series. She comes across as vividly as she did in real life, sparkly-eyed, lively and wise as she was. (more…)

At the end of this week, an old Afrikaans saying came back to my mind. The exact wording eludes me but it goes something like this: We may think we know where we are but all the time we are being carried like great clouds across the sky.

The saying was a favourite of my wise friend, Lynne, poet and publisher and mother of two of my god-children, who died very much too young. Why I remembered it now was the work I’ve had to do on behalf of my Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award nomination. The nomination is being made by the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling. To help, I’ve needed to provide lists of my work over the 30 years of my storytelling. Performances, workshops, courses, special projects, residencies, work in schools, talks, articles, publications – making the lists has been momentous for me, a real walk down memory lane. Yet how else is it possible to demonstrate the work across time of an oral storyteller, especially when, for most of that time, we didn’t have video recordings?

How to measure storytelling

In a very significant sense, the work of the oral storyteller mostly goes into the air (and, hopefully, the hearts and minds of those who listen). How can its results be measured? Its comparative invisibility creates many problems, especially in regard to what happens in education. Especially after the lovely long comment that arrived this week from Hilary Minns of Warwick University, I’ve been thinking about the problems all over again. (more…)

Pleasing (for me!) 

1. I’ve just heard I’m being nominated for an Astrid Lindgren award. Astrid Lindgren was the wonderful Swedish children’s writer who created Pippi Longstocking. I’m to be nominated in the Storyteller category.

2. On Monday I had a phone call with the editorial consultant whom I’d asked for a professional opinion on A Long Run In Short Shorts, my collection of short personal stories. She said she loves them. She’s urging me to try and find a publisher for them. She says they deserve an audience.

3. On Thursday I learned that a book on storytelling and sustainability to which I’ve contributed a chapter has found a publisher and is to be published next March.

4. I’ve managed to do a whole lot of writing during this week while I’ve been home in Wales.

All very pleasing. Of course, I’m sure there’s no chance at all of me winning the Astrid Lindgren Award. Finding a publisher for my stories is going to be very hard. The only payment for the sustainability book will be one free copy and the writing I’m currently doing is sure to take a whole lot longer before it’s complete.

Never mind. It’s the doing that counts.

And I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the cuckoos. On Thursday , another BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) blog gave news that Chris, the tagged cuckoo about whom I wrote last week, has made it over the Mediterranean.

He’ll probably be back in England any day now – a sign of real Spring. (more…)

This week I’ve been struck once again by the continuing tale of the cuckoo. The tale is told in serial form in regular blogs from the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology). What enables it to be told at all is the electronic tag. By tracking a small group of selected cuckoos on their annual migrations, these tags are helping scientists to establish what particular difficulties are contributing to the marked decline in cuckoo numbers in Britain. The cuckoo whose tracking I’ve helped support by contributing a small sum of sponsorship money is one that has been called Lloyd. He’s one of the cuckoos from my native Wales.

But it wasn’t Lloyd who became the centre of attention in this week’s BTO blog. It was one of the English tagged cuckoos called Chris.

The Cuckoo’s Tale (more…)

On Thursday four wonderful stories were told by participants on my Kensington Palace storytelling course for parents. I’ve mentioned some of the stories before. For me, the making of them was one marvellous element of the course. Other elements included my imparting some of the techniques of storytelling with Early Years children, such storytelling essentials as visualization and, of course, aspects of the history and life of Kensington Palace including the 18th century mural by William  Kent and other objects and paintings in the palace which in turn gave rise to our storymaking.

 All the stories we heard on Thursday were made up by the parents working in groups, all revolved around an object real or imagined and what follows is one of the four. It’s a Cinderella-type story and I hope I can do it justice. Its makers said they were willing for me to retell it but the retelling is in my own words.

The necklace of pearls

Once there was a king and a queen who had a son. When the son grew up, his royal parents decided it would be good if he got married. So they announced a great ball to be held at the palace. At the ball, they were thinking, he might meet a suitable bride.

After the ball was announced, there was a great deal of preparing. Extra people were brought to the palace to help – cooks, cleaners, hat-makers, musicians.

One person who was sent to help at the palace was a quiet, shy and good-hearted young girl. The job she was given was to assist with the cleaning. On the morning of the ball, she was sent to clean a particular room in which was a beautiful painting. The painting was of a lovely-looking woman with a little girl beside her who looked as if she was her daughter. Both the woman and the girl in the painting were wearing necklaces made of pearls.

But the painting was very dusty. The cleaning maid took out her duster and carefully started to dust it down. She began at the top – dusting, dusting, dusting – and it was when she came to the face that she experienced a very big surprise. As she dusted the face of the woman, the woman in the painting began to smile. Then as the cleaning maid continued, the woman’s necklace began to glow and slowly, gradually, it came out of the painting and clasped itself round the cleaning girl’s neck.

Just then, a strange creaking noise came from the wardrobe that was the only other thing in the room and when the maid turned round, she saw that the wardrobe’s doors had opened and inside was a most beautiful ball-gown. Then she heard a woman’s voice speaking. It was the woman in the painting. ‘You must put on this dress,’ the woman said, ‘and wear it with the necklace to the ball tonight.’ (more…)

Contrast and connection are this week’s themes. On Wednesday when my husband Paul returned from his trip to Australia to go to his godson’s wedding, the huge contrast in temperature – 29 degrees down to 2 – was just one aspect of what we talked about. Looking at his photos – sunny beaches, a kangaroo with baby in pouch, the vegetation – I felt highly aware of the massive contrasts he’d experienced in culture, landscape and general style of life.

One detail that particularly struck me was his description of the feel on his hand of the delicate claws of a kangaroo mother.

The power of touch

Then, Wednesday evening, I had my own extraordinary experience of touch. In a workshop at the Interfaith Centre in Queens Park, the participants were asked to spend ten minutes talking in pairs (five minutes each) about how we are involved in narrative work. A crucial factor about the results for us all was that, as requested, we’d each spoken to each other with eyes closed, hands touching. It made us all highly aware of the essence of the other.

Connection! That Wednesday evening experience was part of the second Forum event arranged by St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. Since conflict resolution is the very specialised field of work of a number of those who were present, I sometimes felt conscious of the comparative ordinariness of my 30-years of work as a professional storyteller working in schools and with groups of adults. Yet the very next day, back at Kensington Palace for Session 4 of my parents course in how to tell stories, I felt once again conscious of the extraordinariness of it – how, because of the people, it is full of meaning and value. And also, always, a sense of potential.

Points of connection

Here are some of the things I experienced on Thursday.

1. During a synchronised retelling of one of the stories I’ve taught to the group (Mrs Wiggle and Mrs Waggle), I became extremely aware of the big, beautiful eyes of a tiny toddler who had been brought along by his mother. My voice, my face, the story, the atmosphere? Whatever it was that engaged him so much, the little toddler was gripped. He sat looking up at me with such attention, it felt entirely obvious that he knew what was going on, and that in some way it was entirely for him. Connection!

2. With another bigger boy – a four-year old also there with his mother – I saw at once from the way he joined in, though often looking at her not at me, that the story was already familiar to him. So I knew his mother must have told it to him. I was delighted. It’s one of the aims of the course – to get parents telling stories to their own and other children. Connection!

3. During a break in the session, one of the Arabic-speaking mothers showed me a lovely jewellery box she’d brought in from home. She also showed me part of the story her 8-year old daughter had created and written about it. I got the sense that this story was something very new for the girl: her teacher in school had evidently been very impressed by what she’d done. For my part, I was impressed by the mother. Last week, we’d used the magic of objects as an inspiration for making new stories. She’d clearly passed on the magic and in so doing had engendered another example of the potency for change that can arise through story. Connection! (more…)

Recycling has to happen quite often when you’re a storyteller. Stories have to be re-made, themes and ideas adapted to the present need. This is partly because motifs in stories are, by nature, constantly recycling themselves, reappearing in some other similar form, maybe in a new story you’re making. Partly, too, it’s because you’d never have enough time or energy or imagination to make everything completely new every time.

So in Session 2 of my parents’ storytelling course at Kensington Palace this week, some recycling had to go on.

Item 1: name game

First there was another name game. We’d had one last week but this week a few new parents had joined. It was important to re-establish the friendly, inclusive atmosphere we’d created in Session 1. This week’s name game was one I’ve used many dozens of times before. (more…)

On Thursday this week I was asked a very pertinent question. It referred to the 40 or so people portrayed in William Kent’s mural that winds up the side of the King’s Grand Staircase in Kensington Palace. ‘But these are historical people,’ my questioner said. ‘How can we make up stories about them?’

Storytelling at Kensington Palace

At the time, we were standing at the top of the staircase as a class of schoolchildren rushed noisily down it and I was telling my group of adults something of what is known and not known about the characters in the mural. This was all part of the first of six sessions of a Storytelling course I’ve been employed to lead at the Palace – a course which is in turn part of the considerable Outreach work regularly carried out by the Palace with schoolchildren, parents and others.

The Storytelling course has two aims. One is to get the participants telling stories and learning and enjoying the techniques. On the other side is the challenge to create some new stories suitable for telling to quite young children. The stories to be made up will relate to the Palace and the idea is to take as a starting-point one or other of the characters in William Kent’s mural. All were real historical people in the court of King George I and they include such known persons as Mrs Tempest, Queen Caroline’s milliner, who is shown in the mural in a seductive black hood. Also there are Mustapha and Mohammed, the two Turkish servants who were closest to the king. It was their job to dress him and manage his bedchamber. As such, they were the cause of considerable envy and rumour among other courtiers. (more…)

Two significant dates are in view. March 1st is St David’s Day. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s an important day for people in Wales and for Welsh people outside it. It’s the time to pay special attention to the gentle Patron Saint who as he was dying urged those around him ‘to do the little things’. Gwnewch y pethau bychain. I think what St David said is important, namely attending to the detail of people’s needs in the world around you. Which I hope includes valuing the part stories can play.

A great story for St David’s Day is the one I call The Door in the Mountain. To find it, please look back in my Blog Archives to my posting for February 2012. When you read the story, you’ll see it’s not only got daffodils in it – and of course daffodils (or leeks) are the St David’s Day emblem. In the story, a single daffodil becomes an apt symbol of wonder, living on in the mind long after the real daffodils the little girl finds have gone brown and withered and died.

World Book Day 2013

A week later on March 7th comes World Book Day 2013. This day gives a chance to celebrate what books do for all of us who have access to them. Fact or fiction, they can take us into worlds we might never otherwise reach, transcending time and place and our own physical selves to enable us to see things from other points of view. I hope it also prompts us to remember organisations like Book Aid – for there are still too many people in this world who do not have access to any books (or Kindles or the Internet).

One of my best stories for telling makes a bridge between St David’s Day and World Book Day. The kernel of it was told to me at a Local Legends workshop I led in St David’s. The rest developed around that kernel as I told it and retold it. I recently wrote it – not the story itself so much as my experience of telling it. I hope you enjoy what I wrote. (more…)

Storytelling has its public side and with World Book Day 2013 coming up on March 7th, it’s interesting to note how – it always happens in my experience – the number of storytelling invitations from schools goes up. I wish schools were as keen to have storytelling regularly all the year round. Yet it’s great to see the association between books and storytelling being made.

The private side

But storytelling has its private side too. I mentioned family bonds last week. On Thursday this week, I got a fresh experience of how magically these can start to arise.

Thursday was Valentine’s Day. At about 3 p.m. I went round to the home of the former wife of one of my former long-term foster-sons. If that seems a bit complicated, it doesn’t matter. She and her family are still very much part of my world and I’d promised her 6-year-old granddaughter I’d be round to read her a story. The little girl loves books and stories and is an attentive listener. She loves talking about the stories and joining in. It’s great.

This time, as well as some books the little girl probably hadn’t seen before – including Sunshine by Jan Ormerod who sadly recently passed away – I took the wherewithal for making some Valentine hearts like the one I wrote about last week.

What happened? Not at all what I’d expected. Two more grandchildren also arrived to visit, neither of whom I’d seen for some time. One is a little girl aged just three. The other is her brother aged five who, last time I saw him, was a bit of a handful. Yet even then I’d noticed how engaged he’d become when I told them Mrs Wiggle and Mrs Waggle. Now I was in for a bigger surprise. (more…)