Tell Me a Story: a Guide to Traditional Storytelling

Oral storytelling is a lost art that is beginning to revive across the world. Once it was a rich and integral tradition, passed on through families and communities. Stories carried important cultural knowledge and wisdom to be shared down through the generations.

In the space of less than a century, this art has largely disappeared from our communities and families. Tell Me a Story will introduce you to the art and craft of developing this ancient skill, using proven story-learning techniques to help you remember the structure and detail of traditional tales. The course includes opportunities to reflect on what stops you from telling stories now and to clarify your vision of the kind of storyteller you'd like to become.

You will be encouraged to explore the deeper meaning (for you) of the stories you select to learn - building a relationship with your story, making it your own and reflecting on its ‘story medicine' gifts. In a world now mapped by digital hyper-connectivity, so many of us are disconnected from the natural and human communities that surround us. Renewing the art of storytelling may offer a remedy for reconnection.

As we sit by the family fireside, or in forests and by streams, listening to stories told from memory, with gesture and expressive voice, we feel our hearts and minds awaken to ancient ways of relating to each other, to nature and to the sacred. We begin to remap ourselves and our world into wholeness. A well-told story is spellbinding: we walk away with fresh insights, challenged by questions or mysteries-our emotions and spirits stirred into new possibilities of becoming.