Happy New Year frm New Zealand. It’s wonderful weather here. Sorry to hear about the dire cold and snow back home.

I’ve been visiting Kapiti Island, a bird sanctuary founded in 1897, the year when Shemi, my Pembrokeshire storyteller, died. It’s an astonishing place which makes you feel like you are back where the world began. (more…)

Christmas greetings as I get ready to leave for New Zealand where it will be lovely and warm. A huge amount of extra warmth will come from the long, close friendships that we will find and value and renew there (and when I got up this morning and read Larry’s contribution to my Star Apple blog below, I felt I was right back on that snowy morning when we first met years and years ago!). (more…)

It’s the time of year to tell the Star Apple story. A little child, (make it a boy or a girl), is always saying, ‘I’m bored’. The child’s mother has plenty of answers – ‘tidy your bedroom’, ‘do your homework’ or ‘go and play with your toys’ – but the child keeps coming back with the same complaint. Then one day (probably sometime about now!) the mother says, ‘Well, why not go and find a little green house with a chimney on top and a star inside.’ The child is suitably mystified. He or she goes and searches the toy box, then looks up and down the street in case one of the houses has turned green, gained a chimney and developed a star inside. No luck until… (more…)

Yesterday at St Francis of Assisi Primary School in West London, the 11 year-olds all wanted ‘a sad story’. I told them The Magic Tapestry and one boy commented when it was over, ‘I liked that story because it was unusual and very interesting’. I was touched by his comment. Whenever I have that kind of experience – deep listening, spontaneous clapping, thoughtful interest in the story and great appreciation of my various props – I wish there was more emphasis generally on oral storytelling for this age-group. (more…)

Coincidences are the stuff of story. I’m keeping a record of ones that happen to me. Last Thursday brought a good one.

After two full days of storytelling workshops in Barnet and Croydon, I met up for lunch with my lovely god-daughter and her baby in Covent Garden on Thursday. During lunch, I asked her about her siblings because I hadn’t heard news of them for a bit and when we went out of the cafe afterwards after hauling the baby buggy back down the stairs, I looked across Neal’s Yard and saw a tall young man in a woolly hat who looked remarkably like her brother. I was so surprised I couldn’t believe it could be him. Yet I couldn’t believe it wasn’t either. So I stared and then he stared (he was standing talking to another young guy) and I thought he might be feeling offended that there was this older woman staring at him like that. Suddenly he obviously caught sight of his sister and called out loudly and then we were all surprised and delighted. What a coincidence! So many of them happen to me, I’m fascinated. This was one of those extraordinary meeting, a true-life example of something which happens repeatedly in folktales and myths. There of course, the meetings are always crucial to how the story turns out. (more…)

At the Quality in Trafford conference in Manchester on Saturday, there was a great buzz about the keynote speech from Dr Chris Pascal and the buzz spilled into my Storytelling Workshops. I only had to ask if participants had ever lost a key or locked themselves out of their house or if they remembered getting their first key for there to be masses of chat.   Chat …chat…chat…chat… (more…)

I never thought I’d become a blogger. Now I’m feeling really keen. These are exciting times.

My storytelling workshop in Croydon on Wednesday (with Classroom and Teaching Assistants) brought up the problem that people find it far easier to see themselves doing storytelling without the book with Early Years children and Infants. Junior-age children can seem so streetwise; it feels like they might be too mocking. Yet all my experience with the Junior age-group has given me an absolute confidence that they respond just as well or even MORE. Somehow we’ve got to get a culture of stories and storyworking into the top end of Primary schools. It’s the obvious way to feed children’s imaginations. It gets them listening, encourages them to speak and participate, develops their memory and improves their ability to share.

Which is exactly the feeling we can all get storytelling and storyworking.

Yesterday evening (Friday), I gave a talk on storyworking – again in Croydon. Guess what I called it?  The Magic Key.

More soon.

Talk about exciting times. On Wednesday evening I was singing in Bryn Terfel’s Bad Boys concert at London’s Festival Hall. The London Welsh Chorale (where I’m an Alto) provided the chorus. Apart from singing Happy Birthday to Bryn in Welsh and a couple of pieces on our own, we did the choral parts for items including the wonderful Scarpia aria from Tosca and Stephen Sondheim’s Porgy and Bess. In the interval, Bryn brought the choir a birthday cake he’d been given with his photograph in icing, so we literally ate him up. He is truly a superstar with class, an internationally known singer with the common touch. A real people’s person, he made us all feel relaxed and confident.