‘Mind to mind, heart
Over the past two decades there has been a huge growth of interest in the art of storytelling, with people in all sorts of different settings recognising its value as a tool for teaching and communication. PAUL STANISTREET travelled to Scotland, with its centuries-old tradition of oral storytelling, to find out why
‘T
radition is out of fashion,’ was how the great teller of Scottish traveller tales Duncan Williamson summed up the decline of oral storytelling in his country. Many nineteenth- century collectors of these stories regarded the tradition as already calcified, a relic of the past. But it has been kept alive in Scotland, by Williamson and other Scottish storytellers, and the late flowering of interest in the art form, here and elsewhere, is being described as nothing less than a ‘renaissance’. The Scottish Storytelling Forum has been at the forefront of this resurgence. Founded in 1992, it has grown from an original group of 17 professional storytellers to a network of more than 80. The hub of its activity is the Scottish Storytelling Centre, opened in 2006, in Edinburgh. Under the directorship of Donald Smith, the centre has emerged as an important national and international resource for storytelling, offering workshops for all ages, and seeking to encourage and develop storytellers in every community. The forum’s membership has gradually expanded to include groups and individuals from all over the world, a trend reflected this summer with the inaugural meeting of the Federation for European Storytelling, attended by representatives from 25 countries. The upsurge in interest has been remarkable, and has attracted the attention of people working and volunteering in an array of different settings, people who recognise themselves as, to some degree, operating in the oral storytelling tradition. Recognising a need, the Scottish Storytelling Centre began to work with nearby Newbattle Abbey College, a residential college with a strong liberal arts ethos, to develop the first-ever professional qualification in storytelling. Now in its second year, the course is helping learners who already see storytelling as a part of their work to ‘dig deeper’ to find their own voices and to develop their skills as storytellers. For Donald Smith, the course is a breakthrough for contemporary storytelling, demonstrating the difference it can make in various different contexts, and affirming the value of storytelling in developing confidence and creativity, and in bringing individuals closer together. ‘There is an old Scottish traveller proverb that a story should be told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart,’ Smith says. ‘We’re talking here about live telling of stories, a direct sharing. There’s no script, even in your head. You might have the shape of the story in your head, but it’s always made anew in the telling. Everybody is imagining and reacting and experiencing together and the storyteller is a kind of enabler who is allowing everybody to share this story. You’re not a solo performer, it’s a group thing.’ Storytelling is a very old Scottish tradition, he says. In both
School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh
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