The World Café Experience is a dynamic session to share ideas and knowledge, through dialogue and collaboration.

BIO

Zsolt Pinter is a storyteller, trainer and certified facilitator from Hungary. 

'The Hungarian cultural heritage enchanted me already as child. I started to folkdance when I was 10. Learned to be traditional wedding master of ceremony right after college, and started to learn storytelling and playing music when I was close to 40. With my wife -Szilvia- we built and manage the „Csűrdöngölő” Event House (www.csurdongolo.hu) and organise high quality programs since 2014.
Since 2015 I organise the biggest Hungarian Folktale Festival. (www.nepmesefesztival.hu). Managed several big cultural funds to enhance awareness of the Hungarian culture.'

Omsorg (care) is, in Norwegian, a complicated word. The term carries with it both duty and love, it is institutional, and a driving emotional force. Through using scar as an example, this workshop examines how omsorg (care) function as an aesthetic awareness. We all have a scar. Perhaps the most poignant scar story is the Greek tragedy about Oedipus; when the old nurse, as she washes his feet, discovers the scar that reveals the power of the prediction: he has killed his father and taken his mother as wife (Auerbach, 2002). Using scars as a didactic invitation to tell stories was documented by Betty Rosen in the book and none of it was nonsense (Rosen, 1988) in 1988 and has since then become part of the teaching in oral storytelling.

All stories are like scars, they are marks on something that has happened, even traditional narratives such as folk tales and myths carry with them historical truths (Propp, Martin, & Martin, 1984) and points to beliefs, communities and cultures that once were (Hodne, 1990).

Through working with stories about scars, this workshop explores the field of oral storytelling as an artistic expression. The story is here seen as a place of negotiation about mimesis where the personal, professional, the intimate and the public, and the aesthetic meet and reflect in interaction. The leading concept in the workshop will be the phases of mimesis. Mimesis is often associated with the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 f.kr. – 322 f.kr.) who himself never gave a definition on the term, and mimesis in the context of Aristotle is understood as representation (Halliwell, 2012). According to Paul Ricoeur (1913 - 2005) Aristotle’s mimesis connects to poiesis, meaning art and that it is therefore only within art that mimesis is effective (Ricoeur, 1991). Mimesis is an artistic process through this workshop the participants will explore the different phases of the concept of mimesis. 

Ricoeur claims mimesis is a chain of actions related to practice (Ricoeur, 1991, s. 139) and the process requires an understanding of what can serve as a choice of an artistic expression (Ricoeur, 1991, s. 140). The workshop will therefore be practical with a process consisting of exercises, dialogues, and reflection. The process starts where the story shows that it has roots in a lived life (Verhesschen, 2003), then the participants explore the poetic connected to mimesis, ending up in a discussing regarding the relation between stories, people, art, and contemporary time. 

Literature

Auerbach, E. (2002). Mimesis Virkelighetsfremstillingen i Vestens litteratur. Oslo: Gyldendal.

Halliwell, S. (2012). Mimesis. In S. Cushman, C. Cavanagh, J. Ramazani, & P. Rouzer, The princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics Fourth edition (pp. 884-886). Priceton University Press.

Hodne, Ø. (1990). Våre folkeeventyr. Prismet 2, pp. 51-59.

Propp, V., Martin, A., & Martin, R. (1984). Theory and history of folklore. University of Minnesota Press.

Ricoeur, P. (1991). Mimesis and Representation. In M. J. Valdés, A Ricoeur Reader Reflection and Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rosen, B. (1988). And None of It Was Nonsense. London: Heinemann Educational Books .

Verhesschen, P. (2003). The poem's invitation: Ricoeur's concept of Mimesis and its Consequences for Narrative Educational Research. The Journal of Philosophy of Educational Society of Great Britain

Bio

Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen has worked as a storyteller since 1996 both at national and abroad. She has participated in several international festivals and in four EU projects that deal with oral storytelling. She has sold performances to the cultural rugsack and toured internationally. She is the associate professor in oral storytelling at Oslomet – metropolitan university in Oslo, Norway and in 2008 she published the book "Introduction to oral storytelling", Universitetsforlaget. In 2019 she came with her second book on the same topic. She has written several academic articles on oral storytelling, where she uses artistic research as an input to understand oral storytelling and narratives. Her focus is on letting the traditional narratives shed light on contemporary themes.

Pauline Seebregts and Mia Verbeelen will share in this inspiration session the development of an educational program for high school students about refugee issues in a specific region in Holland. A program combining an applied storytelling performance and an educational program. This program was commissioned by the Regional Heritage Pact of Rivierenland, The Netherlands in collaboration with the Culture and Education Center, Zinder Tiel, the Netherlands.

After this session you will have insight in the creation and development of an educational program on an actual topic such as refugees.

• How we created the performance in strong collaboration with the refugees and based on their actual stories.
• How we emphasised the different perspectives on this sensitive topic at that moment in that part of the Netherlands.
• How we re-worked the performance to a story documentary for secondary school students.
• How we created an online educational program with different digital techniques to deepen the issues brought up in the film.

We will enliven the session by telling small parts of the stories and showing small fragments of the film and the digital program.

Bio

Pauline Seebregts is working since 2001 as a professional storyteller, trainer and coach. As a performer she creates performances mainly on socially relevant topics such as health care, loneliness, refugee issues, sustainability etc. Her specialty is to do this tailor made and often commissioned by health care -, cultural-, or government related organisations. She is also a professionally skilled trainer, coach and dialogue facilitator. In 2017 was she designated as Storytelling Ambassador of Holland and Belgium by a storytelling expert jury. (www.storywise.nu)

Bio

Mia Verbeelen is working as a storyteller since 1992. Besides storyteller she is also a co-organiser of storytelling festivals in the Netherlands and the Dutch part of Belgium. She worked on bilingual stories with French, Canadian, Finish and German storytellers. In 2015 she was Storytelling Ambassador for the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium). Since 2020 she runs her own storytelling-activities in her wonderful venue, ‘Storytelling castle ‘The Golden Mirror’ in Antwerp.
Together with Pauline Seebregts she created a storytelling performance (2019) for adults and a story-documentary and digital educational program (2021) for youngsters, with stories of refugees. Both, Pauline and Mia were co-founders and teachers at the Vertelacademie. Teaching storytelling in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Storytelling competitions for children and young people, mainly from folklore groups (with up to 500 participants per year) have been taking place in Latvia since 1997, training and festivals for adults since 2007. The Network of Storytelling Libraries of the Latvian National Committee for UNESCO has been operating since 2010. In 2017, the Latvian Storytellers Association was established, which unites these three networks and individual storytellers.

Bio

Dr. philol. Guntis Pakalns works at Archives of Latvian Folklore at Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University since 1983, main topics of publications and conference papers: history of Latvian folkloristics, Latvian folk tales, traditional and urban legends, contemporary storytelling and storytellers.

PhD candidate Mara Mellena is folklore project coordinator at Nacional Centre for Education Republic of Latvia, lecturer at Latvian Culture Academy, Chair of Council of ICH of Latvia; research interests - communicative dimension of traditional culture.

PhD candidate Baiba Ivane is a lecturer at the University of Latvia, Faculty of Social Sciences (Department of Library Science and Information), research interests are related to the place identity of libraries and its representations; and storytelling as a methodological approach to library advocacy and services.

This session will start with a description of my experience working with refugees, including many examples of instances in my practice which have thrown up major issues for consideration. It will also include practical workshop type exercises for participants to enrich their understanding of issues raised and to give them not only insights but practical approaches to this aspect of applied storytelling.

Content, Context and Timing.

Taking into account the different stages of refugee's journeys - those of survival, escape, resettlement and assimilation, we will explore how and what to tell according to the respective timelines of refugee participants. We will look at how the act of storytelling in itself can be an aid to settling, acceptance and well- being and what kinds of stories are suitable for this purpose. We will look into the dangers and appropriateness of telling/sharing  stories with particular content such as those referring to exile, trauma, war and survival. 

We will explore how refugees as storytellers can contribute to their own healing process and that of others, and how they can become advocates for increased understanding and appreciation in the wider community.

BIO

Sharon Jacksties has been a performance, applied and community storyteller for more than 30 years following a career in mental health services. Qualifications in psychiatric nursing and dramatherapy led to a performing arts degree, discovering oral storytelling and being part of the UK storytelling revival. My first applied storytelling work was with refugees in schools, day centres and with the charity Freedom from Torture where I developed innovative approaches using storytelling as part of a recovery process. Last month the International Handbook of Therapeutic Stories and Storytelling was published by academic publishers, Routledge, Kegan Paul for which I was co-editor, contributing a chapter and anthology about my refugee work. FEST is hosting its launch 21/03/22. I teach and mentor storytellers in the UK and abroad. My work in Romania has resulted in storytelling being integrated into the National Association of Play and Dramatherapy's training. For 2 years I have mentored a group of Romanian applied storytellers, former students, and am now teaching them about using storytelling as an intervention in the current refugee crisis. FEST's first UK ambassador.

Vilmos Csipkés was one of the last Hungarian traditional roma storytellers. His repertoire contained beautiful and complex tales of magic, some religious tales as well as anecdotes and jokes. He learned the stories mainly from the roma communitin his village (Arló, North-East Hungary) and during the years of conscription in the military service.

I met Mr. Csipkés coincidently in 2017. From that moment, I realised I may have found one of the last traditional storytellers in Hungary. Till his death in 2021 we (me and Norbert Varga folklorist from Slovakia) collected and recorded all of his tales and tried to focus on his art, following the personality study method (or so called Budapest school).Therefore we not only focused on the texts of the tales themselves, but on the whole socio-cultural context where the tales of Vilmos Csipkés were told and used for entertainment.

We were interested in the story of his life, we wanted to know his sources, where and how he learned his tales, how the process of bearing these tales worked, on what traditional and non-traditional occasions and how the tales were told. We also wanted to know more about his gestures, his body language - used during performing the tales - as well as the linguistic background of his art. We recorded more than  14 hours of tales in publishing-ready high quality, as well as an additional 8 hours of ethnographic material with an amateur-camera and we made more than 200 photographs. The result of this fieldwork is currently under printing process and the publishing event is on the 8th of april, so by the time of the conference the book will be published. In my presentation I am going to talk about the most interesting details of the art of Vilmos Csipkés and I am planning to use some subtitled videos where he is performing. Because of language barriers I would like to focus on the traditional roma events where he learned his stories, on his repertoire, on the method of learning the tales and I would like to talk about his performative skills.

Bio

Boglárka Klitsie-Szabad  is an ethnographist and a storyteller, currently on maternity leave with my two small sons. She works at the Hungarian Heritage House, as an oral storyteller specialist. In 2017 she was one of the 12  storytellers chosen by FEST, who had the possibility to attend a European storytelling festival. In 2019 I received the Prima Junior price for my activities in the field of storytelling and achievements for teaching this traditional art. At the same year I became a Young Master of Folk Arts. This award is a prize that can be given by the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Human Resources to folk artists and performers aged 15–35, for recognising outstanding artistic or performing arts performance in certain folk arts branches.  I am an active and proud member of the Meseszó Association.

I will share in this inspiration session how I've been working with true personal stories from health care professionals based on dilemma's and issues in their care work, such as; communication in teams, collaboration and connection between teams/different departments and between professionals and patients/clients.

I will explain how to create a tailor made performance;

• How to collect the true stories in the different departments of an organisation
• How to find the red threads out of the stories
• How to create the performance in service of the specific theme/issue
• 'Do's and Don'ts'

After the storytelling performance I usually facilitate a training session to deepen the themes/dilemma's delivered in the performance. I will also explain how to create and lead these kind of sessions

I will share;

• Different technics and exercises.
• 'Do's and Don'ts'.

Bio

Pauline works since 2001 as a professional storyteller, trainer and coach from her own office Storywise. She works as a performer creating performances mainly on socially relevant topics such as health care, loneliness, domestic violence, refugee issues, sustainability etc.

Her specialty is to do this tailor made and often commissioned by health care -, culture-, or government related organisations.

She's also a professionally skilled trainer, coach and dialogue facilitator. She offers the performances with facilitation sessions/dialogue to deepen the themes of the performance.

She ran the last ten years longer projects with storytelling performances and facilitating programs for professionals in Health care organisations as for instance STEVIG, Dichterbij, Kentalis Pluryn, Cello and Aveleijn in the South and East of Holland. Organisations for physically and mentally disabled people.

In commission of health care national knowledge center Vilans, we developed the performance into short films and programs for educational purpose for health care professionals.

In times of global migration movements bi- or multilingual storytelling is becoming increasingly essential for the storytelling communities. In my experience there is quite often a tough timetable for rehearsing and preparing before performing during a festival. So this workshop should enable storytellers who want to work in multilingual ensembles to find an easy approach how to work on this.

During the workshop the storytellers will exercise practical work on different methods of bilingual or multilingual storytelling. In groups of two or three they will work on short stories provided by the workshop leader.
First approach is a dramaturgical  one: How to devide a story and assign those parts to the different languages. This is also about how to work on a story without a common language. And how to work if storytellers can talk in english about the story but don't understand each other when performing in Finnish and Turkish for example.
Second step refers to the performing skills of tandem(or more)-storytelling in different languages: There will be presented different methods of how to plan and arrange the swapping of languages. The participants will try on each and evaluate.
Last not least they will improvise with all these skills and methods trying to includee "fix points"of physical and / or verbal matching

Bio

Suse Weisse is a storyteller, a director, drama teacher and lecturer. She has been invided frequently to international storytelling festivals and has performed at many European events.  In Potsdam she founded an association for storytelling called “ErzählWerk e.V.” which is realising a yearly International Storytelling Festival “verbale!”. She lives and works in Potsdam, Berlin and around the world and is mother of two nearly grown-ups. She is a Storytelling teacher since many years for University of Arts Berlin  (UdK) as FHCH Potsdam. Her heart goes for the merely rough and edgy stories of the north. She has been experiencing on bilingual and multilingual storytelling since 2004 and been developing her didactic approaches ever since. In Berlin she co-founded a multilingual group called "Ein Fenster zur Welt - a window to the world." She has performed in bilingual Tandems with many international colleages as David Campbell, Jack Lynch, Mia Verbeelen, Heli Aaltonen, Carles Garcia Domingo, Nathalie Bondoux. 

This workshop is intended as a passage to an open understanding of the nature of the stories that we create and that creates us. A simple structure connects to share and refine personal stories through body, voice and presence.

The Story Play concept has emerged from 30 years of practicing creative storytelling. What happens to the dialog between the Storyteller and the listener if everybody in the room is invited to add their creative intelligences to what’s possible to experience and imagine in the room?

Bio

Jesper la Cour is one of Denmark’s most experienced Storytellers. His wide range in his physical and dialogical style has included children, youth and adults in thousands of performances on half of the globe. The creative Story Play model has been developed through a € 300.000 funding by the Danish Arts Foundation.

Some storytellers will fascinate you from their first step on stage till the last one. Other storytellers need more time and effort to come into their own.
How to do that? How do you bring your story really to life, in open contact with an audience and preferably without stage-fright. Great actors seem to do that naturally…

Walter Roozendaal developed basic exercises on a simple teachable foundation, seemingly simple, but most effective: 'What I'm after is: an open inviting presence that welcomes the audience, to be fully and freely responsive to my performance and the audience, to be poised and at ease with myself.' Walter teaches exercises for warming-up, entering stage and starting telling your story, as well as three different basic perspectives to use in storytelling.

The workshops is aimed at

• amateurs who like to gain some of the powers of their professional colleagues and
• teaching colleagues who like to enrich their repertoire of educational insights and exercises.

Bio

Walter Roozendaal started his career as a teacher, dancing international folk dances and playing folk music.

Then he read directing theatre and teaching drama at the University of Arts in Utrecht, followed by a refresher course at the Netherlands Mime Centre and an advanced course with the director Arend Hauer.

Since 1998, he has been performing as a teller of international folk stories, accompanying them with hundreds of folk tunes on his accordion.

Walter has been teaching and directing at the Conservatory of Amsterdam since 1983. He has directed singers, choirs, storytellers (at the Storytelling Academy), music theatre, school performances and concerts, and trained directors of youth music theatre. He published ‘A guide to Performance Skills’ and a syllabus about producing amateur musicals.

Walter also has assisted cultural education in schools as a theatre consultant, and teached drama on the teachers’ training course at INHolland University of Applied Sciences.

Storytelling and traditional tales have always played a role in Irish education, from the time of the hedge schools through to Patrick Pearse’s experimental institution and today’s classrooms. Strong links between oral and literary traditions in Ireland, and between storytelling, poetry, music and drama, have led to productive applications of storytelling in formal and informal education in recent decades. These have been successful due these links, maintained through collaborations between storytellers, educators, librarians, and arts organisations. 

Storytelling in schools and libraries has been used to:

• Develop literacy and oracy across all subject areas and year groups
• Develop knowledge in specific curricular topics such as historic periods, the environmental crisis, visual arts, science, and literature studies
• Teach creative writing
• Teach older children and teenagers to tell stories
• Teach young people to share and collect stories with elders
• Instill young people with confidence and self-esteem, as well as support their well-being
• Bring together disparate or divided parts of communities, such as in Northern Ireland, or in supporting migrants and refugees, or Travellers, the elderly, or people with disabilities who are isolated

This session will present examples and model particular processes of successful educational storytelling practices and residencies. Examples will come from the 1938 Schools Collection, Cross-Community, Shared-Education, Writers-in-Schools, Champion of Reading, and Creative Schools programmes. Exercises will be set for participants to problem-solve, plan and explore educational storytelling activities by using these examples and relating them to resources and procedures in their localities.

Bio

Patrick Ryan is a storyteller, educator and writer based in Belfast. He works regularly for Poetry Ireland’s Writers-in-Schools programme, is on the board of IBBY Ireland and is an active member of Storytellers of Ireland. He works all over Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA in schools, libraries, arts centres and festivals. He was Research Fellow at the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling, storyteller-in-residence at Moscow Children’s Book Festival, and writer-in-residence at the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at University of Manitoba. He has led several innovative storytelling projects including Kick into Reading, which trained professional footballers to tell stories to children to promote literacy. His writing includes articles on storytelling, folklore and literacy, the award winning anthology Shakespeare’s Storybook, and, with Donna Schatt, Story Listening & Experience in Early Childhood.

The blocking transgenerational patterns and the relief of them by storytelling as assertive communication functions as a survival mechanism. But do we recognise where we are, do we know about how to overcome? The folktales know, because they are all life recopies for all kinds of  breakdowns that humanity ever experienced. In this workshop we will run through  Italian, Hungarian, Evenki folktales and Iceland legends (Katarina, Cinderella, Ivarr and Lotilko) to feel, sense and understand the wisdom of the folktales regarding life. Regarding connecting to ourselves, others, animals, plants, and all the surrounding Universe.

Bio

I am Szabó Enikő, storyteller and folktale therapist. I've been telling stories since my childhood, this being my family's survival method I learned, inherited to be a storyteller for life. I have been working since 2011, as a story therapist.
My university studies are in the field of psychology, pedagogy and special needs education of children and adults in Romanias and Hungary's best universities, having also  post-university degrees, but defining myself always as a storyteller and story therapist  first.

This session will introduce the oral storytelling traditions of Iran in general and focus on a traditional type of oral storytelling known as “pardeh khooni” in particular. The first half of the session is a journey into the rich history of oral traditions in Iran throughout the centuries. It introduces this long and complex tradition and highlights its significance in preserving Persian culture. The second half of the session unveils the art of “pardeh khooni” or “curtain recitation”. It describes its origin, main characteristics as well as its development through the ages. The session ends with a performance in order to demonstrate this old traditional technique of telling in practice. I will use a printed/painted fabric and show how as a storyteller I combine the visual with the oral in order to tell a story to my particular audience. 

Bio

Zahra Afsah was born and grew up in Tehran. She studied Eastern art and archeology at SOAS and in 2016 completed her second MA in Persian painting and transcultural visuality at the Courtauld Institute of art. Her MA dissertation examines the links between oral storytelling and Persian miniature painting, exploring the direct influences of the oral tradition in the Khamseh of Nizami of 1494-95. Zahra has run workshops, given lectures and performed stories in schools, museums, universities, festivals and public settings both in the UK and Iran. Zahra crafts the ancient Persian stories she tells with precision and passion.

In this workshop we will make an approach on how to bring history into a narratable form. A number of things have to be considered such as balancing artistic freedom, facts and maintaining integrity towards the historical figures. The storytellers should, amongst other things, assume a stance towards lived life, so that they can then thoughtfully translate it into a narrative. 

Bio

Britta C. Wilmsmeier explores variations of storytelling formats in her performances ranging from traditional storytelling to shows combining traditional stories with biographic and historic events. She also uses various techniques in her applied storytelling workshops with children, teenagers, families and adults as well as refugees. The development and sustainable storytelling formats are based on her versatile experiences and qualifications and also bear fruit through cooperations with colleagues and networks such as Tellers without Borders. In the last years Britta C. Wilmsmeier created special storytelling workshop formats for working with refugees and storytelling shows for and with refugees. She has written a storytelling piece accompanied by the Jazz musician Roman Ott telling the history of the house she lives in, premiered in May 2019: Biography of a Berlin House. 100 years of (his)stories of a house and its residents. 

Developing my current research into contemporary storytelling's performance presences (Harrop, 2021; 2023) this lecture focuses on Queens of Albion (2022), the second of two original works rooted in English mythic histories.

The fourteenth-century story of Albina, legendary founder of Albion, occupies an ambivalent place in the English mythic canon. Although emerging from the 'matter of Britain', most famously exemplified in Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum or Historia Regum Britanniae (twelfth century) Albina's narrative tends to be disparaged as doubly illegitimate: unabashedly plagiarised from Greek myth, and entextualised in fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman verse. 

Reflecting this marginal status, Queens of Albion combines performance storytelling with aesthetics and energies borrowed from the vernacular tradition of English pantomime, and contemporary practices of autobiographical storytelling. Both forms co-exist somewhat uneasily with performance storytelling's established conventions. Invoking panto, a branch of popular entertainment historically termed 'illigitimate' (Moody, 2000) threatens both to expose, and undermine, English storytelling's foundational borrowings from theatrical high art (Wilson 2006, 13-16). While autobiographical storytelling is frequently understood as a de-skilled, populist format poised to usurp the achievements of revival storytelling (Sobol 2020, 8-10).

This paper considers the aptness of such a fusion for the exploration of a myth of national origins which occupies a potentially subversive position in relation to  both revival storytelling repertoires, and present-day English politics. It analyses how Queens of Albion's juxtaposition of multiple story-forms and aesthetics playfully acknowledges the Albina story's 'illegitimate' status, in the process beginning to re-imagine the making of 'our island story' a lively, low-art, and accessibly relational (Bourriaud, 1998) experience.

Bio

Stephe Harrop is Associate Professor of Drama at Liverpool Hope University, UK. Her research focuses on contemporary storytelling practices, spoken-word performance, Greek tragedy and classical receptions, and performer training. Stephe's recent storytelling shows include Henry V: The King's Knickers (2019) and Queens of Albion: Bronze and Stone (2022). She's currently working on a monograph exploring new collaborative platforms for story-led performance, and celebrating female storytelling artists as innovators in interdisciplinary creativity. Contemporary Storytelling Performance: Female Artists on Practices, Platforms, Presences is forthcoming from Routledge.

Whether we feel we are included, have a sense of belonging or a shared identity, often depends on the way we relate to our surroundings, both as individuals and groups.  Heritage plays a crucial role in this; it can be used to revive nationalistic narratives and to sustain barriers or to revive inclusive narratives by focussing on participation in contemporary meaning making processes (cfr. Faro convention texts (Council of Europe)).  What role can storytelling play in building/improving (heritage) communities? This is one of the questions FEST and the other project partners try to answer in the People, Places and Stories (PPS) project (Erasmus+).  
In this workshop Shona Cowie and Guy Tilkin will inform you about the PPS project and about the role storytelling can play in heritage identification processes, value definition, inclusion, civic participation, sustainable development, interpretation …. With the participants we will discuss the value of heritage for storytelling and storytellers.

BIO

Shona Cowie is an experienced storyteller, facilitator and director with a broad international career. After training with the Central School of Speech and Drama  and L’ecole Jacques Lecoq, she founded story-education company Fosforo, in São Paulo, Brazil and travelled with her collective Senza across Europe and Tunisia to research and platform stories of Mediterranean migration.

Since 2018 she has worked closely with European leaders in applied storytelling, The Village Storytelling Centre, with whom a project she led was awarded by the Scottish Civic Trust as ‘exceptional work with young people’.  She ran pioneering projects in the care and recovery sectors and became one of Glasgow Life’s 2019 Artists in Residents. Recently, Shona joined the Executive Committee of the Federation of European storytellers as their Young Storyteller’s representative. She is dedicated to live heritage and bringing front and centre those who have been pushed aside in our stories.

BIO

Guy Tilkin has been European project manager and director of the Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, Belgium, an international culture and conference centre, based in a historic castle.
In 1996 Guy Tilkin started an international storytelling festival that grew to become the biggest festival in Europe, unique in the world in its multilingual approach. He also has been the coordinator of a series of European projects under the Lifelong Learning, Creative Europe and Erasmus+ programmes and gained special know how on e.g. applied storytelling, heritage interpretation, heritage competence development and validation of non-formal learning.

Guy Tilkin is chair of board of FEST, the Federation for European Story Telling and member of the European Commission Expert Group on Cultural Heritage.

How examining one’s own story can build mental resilience

How can you use your own story to get or keep a grip on your own life? How can you make sure that wobbling does not immediately lead to falling? The training helps you to find meaning in your life story by analyzing your own memories.

The training builds on the book Sterker Staan met je Eigen Verhaal (Standing Stronger with your own story) published in June 2021 by Arjen Barel. He combines typical storytelling theories, like (a simplified version of) the heroes’ journey with narrative practices and socio-psychological dynamics, offering a way to explore one’s one story in a structured way. These are sometimes connected to the (historical) context of stories and is presented as an alternative for the need for self-structuring after the loss of the big stories.

Some of the exercises described in this book will be done together and are deepened. By working on your own stories - based on memories - as well as listening to the stories of others, you learn how your own life story can become the foundation for the present and the future. Arjen will guide you and give you tools to tackle this self-examination in a structured way. You will also pay attention to the other, the listener, as he, she of them can help you find your own story.

BIO

Arjen Barel is producer and director in the field of storytelling performances.
Until 2017 he was responsible for the programme of the International Storytelling Festival Amsterdam, which he founded in 2008, and of other festivals. He has experience in artistic coaching of performers, both amateur and professionals. He specialises in working and creating performances with vulnerable groups and community building projects.

Arjen teaches Storytelling and Presentation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. He also delivers training for professionals in how to use storytelling in youth work and community work in several places in the world. He teaches various courses and put together the book Theatre & Marketing, Tension & Thrill (2004) in collaboration with Esther Lagendijk. In 2020 he published a new book about Applied Storytelling, called Storytelling and the World, how sharing stories can contribute to personal growth and social impact. Currently the book is translated into English and Turkish. His second book, Standing Stronger With Your Own Story, was published in June 2021

An inspirational workshop 

A new perspective for performing Storytellers and a cross collaboration with the tourism sector.

Paola will illustrate the new formats of Storytelling for tourism that Raccontamiunastoria has experimented in Italy in the past two years, based on the  performing Storytelling training for tour guides that the organisation  has carried out between 2017 and 2020 and the following  development of a fruitful cross sector collaboration with tour guides organisations.

All three formats (story walks in archeological parks and historical sites, story tours and story visits, and blend of the two) are currently active in Rome and carried out by teams with both performing storytellers and tour guides with a three year Storytelling training, with growing demand and success. 

The presentation will include a timeline of the project development, video witness of the tour guides  involved in the  project and pictures of the event.

We hope this could be a model project for similar initiatives in other countries

BIO

Paola Balbi (Italy) is a professional actress and storyteller with 20 years of experience. She is founder and co-artistic director of Raccontamiunastoria Storytelling Company, the leading storytelling Company in Italy and of the International Storytelling Festival of Rome. She has been a founding member of FEST (Federation for European Storytelling), serving on the board for two years. She travels regularly all over the world with her storytelling performances both for adults and children and is a renowned workshop leader and storytelling trainer on the International Storytelling Revival scene. Paola is invited on a regular base as featured artists to some of the most prestigious International Storytelling Festivals and has been performing- among others- at Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival -Wales, U.K, Alden Biesen International Storytelling Festival- Belgium, M.Y.T.H.O.S International Storytelling Festival -Greece,Toronto Festival of Storytelling -Canada, Singapore International Storytelling Festival-Singapore. 

A workshop on the development of a Storytelling art and method model for Lithuanian Libraries, in which thirteen libraries of Panevėžys region participated. 

A Nordic Culture Point project, a partnership between Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. Trainers Rose Marie Lindfors from the Nordic Storytelling Center (Sweden) and Tiril Bryn (Norway). 

In the workshop Tiril Bryn, Virginija Švedienė and Rose-Marie Lindfors will present why the project started, the training process inspired of the competence model for oral storytelling and the  outcomes. They will also show the Storyboxes that were created by the artist Neringa Minkevičienė. 

BIO

Tiril Bryn
Through the art of storytelling I ask questions about: Our relation to nature, identity, cultural heritage, indigenous traditions, science and mythology. What kind of stories are important in our time?

My work as a storyteller is about producing and touring with storytelling performances, cooperation with artists from different fields and storytelling workshops - about improving storytelling skills or about creating new stories. I work with projects outdoors - urban nature and sustainability. In my experience stories and the way we tell them can change and adjust the way we experience life and how we deal with challenges. I have studied storytelling at OsloMet, have a masters degree in cultural heritage where I compared Japanese and Norwegian fairy tales from University in Oslo and have previously worked as a journalist. Member of Fortellerhuset, a group of storytellers in Norway: www.fortellerhuset.no -  www.tirilbryn.com

BIO

Virginija Švedienė is the Adult Education Coordinator for Panevėžys County Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė Public Library, the biggest library of Northeastern Lithuania. Virginija‘s current work focuses on the coordinating library international projects, field of her activity includes library advocacy and strategic communication, establishing and maintenance of professional contacts with foreign libraries, development of international traineeship programs, presenting library services and activities in professional publications and e-platforms and professional events in the national and international context.

Virginija Švedienė leads a club for citizens on improving their foreign language skills and develops and implements training programs on improving the professional competencies for public library specialists.  

 Virginija  is a member of Lithuanian Librarians‘ Association, Lithuanian Association od Adult Education, Europeana Education Community, American Libraries Association and Public Libraries Association.

 Being interested in applying storytelling art and methods in library‘s activities, Virginija has currently been working on the projects, involving partners – associations and storytellers – from the Nordic countries (Sweden and Norway), Latvia and Scotland.

BIO

Rose-Marie Lindfors is a professional Storyteller and Drama pedagogue and representative of the Nordic Storytelling Centre in Skellefteå, Sweden.

The last 35 years I have been working with Storytelling, drama, creative arts and development processes. In schools, library’s, art clubs, festivals, learning centers and University’s. I have a large collection of stories from the whole world I can tell. I do workshops and trainings in:

▪ Storytelling and drama as performing art
▪ Applied storytelling – as a tool for learning, social inclusion and sustainability.   
▪ Innovation and entrepreneurship.

I run my own company where I inspire, develop, educate and teach. I am a dedicated networker and has assignments both nationally and internationally. Interested in intercultural development and diversity in society.

Tension is the main spice to your dish (story), which gives taste. Without spices the dish will be tasteless and crumbly. How much salt, pepper and tension to add to your story? How not to overmuch, but not to reduce. Find out the best recipe for your story in this workshop.

BIO

Raimondas Paškevičius, head of Creative and Entertainment Industries, Digital Communication, Video Creation and Media Study Programmes of SMK University of Applied Social Sciences, Lecturer, TV Director and Scriptwriter. Raimondas Paškevičius is the well know storytelling, creativity, public speaking, script writing and audio-visual products development trainer in Lithuania. He has been teaching for many years in various higher educational institutions of the country and abroad as well as conducting number of trainings for business enterprises.

Whenever we hear or read a story we tap into our complex humanity in an equally complex way as we decide whether the argument, message, or storyline as presented is very convincing, whether it truly resonates with us. In this workshop we will be seeking for answers: is the speaker authentic? How does the audience feel about the topic? What do they think about it, do they believe?

BIO

Giedrė Vaičekauskienė, Doctor in Social Sciences, has accumulated significant long-term experience in television journalism as a presenter and creator of programs. Giedrė still uses television experience today as a voice actress, moderator of various events. As a lecturer in higher education, she teaches students how to create compelling audiovisual stories. In her dissertation, Giedrė examined the role of rhetoric in new media.

Library is the only one of the Lithuanian county libraries to develop storytelling at the strategic level. The goal is - reviving the living tradition of oral teaching, introducing applied storytelling methods into library services and creating narrative-based educational models for children, youth and adult audiences.

Panevėžys County Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė Public Library is implementing several international projects related to the storytelling, so we want to share our experience:

• Storytelling for the Audiences of Lithuanian Libraries. Partners: The Land of Legends (Sweden), Jelgava City Library (Latvia). 3 storytelling tours created during the projects are presented to library visitors as new services.
• Development of Storytelling Art and Method Model for Lithuanian Libraries

Partners:

-storyteller, educator, project manager Rose-Marie Lindfors (Nordic Storytelling Center, Sweden);

-storyteller, artist Tiril Bryn. She focuses on cultural heritage and storytelling in nature.

During the project, a methodological publication “How to Tell Stories. A Beginner's Guide ”and narrative educations was created.

• International Qualifications for Innovative Library Ideas, 3 5-day courses at The Village Storytelling Training Center (Scotland) for 5 members of library.

Library is a member of the newly established Nordic-Baltic storytelling network and participates in the networking project as a partner:

• Nordic-Baltic Storytelling Network. Project leader: The Land of Legends (Berättarnätet Kronoberg - Sagobygden), Sweden;

Project partners: The Hilmar Alexandersen Foundation (Stiftinga Hilmar Alexandersen), Norway; Storytellers ’Association of Latvia, Latvia;

Library 2020 started to organise International Storytelling Festival SEKAS. It is also planned for 2022 and will be ongoing.

Through various activities, the library purposefully seeks to create a network of storytelling libraries in its region, to unite 13 storytelling libraries.

We aim to involve as many professional European narrators and organisations as possible in the project activities, invite them to the library and to learn from them.

We aim to get to know the widest possible range of high-quality storytelling methodologies.

So in 3 year period, we had a lot of workshops for librariens, educations for target groups, storytelling tours, events for our community, we visited Glazgo storytelling village, our partners in Latvia and Sweden. We even published a methodological material for everyone, who wants to be a storyteller (it’s 90 pages story of our story).

BIO

Greta Kėvelaitienė, 31 years old, a storytelling network coordinator in Panevėžys region. She is a historian, working as Head of the Cultural Heritage Research and Digitization department.