Scots and Gaelic, and in both rural and urban working communities, it was, for centuries, ‘the backbone of the local culture’. More recently, though, live storytelling has played a more marginal part in cultural, community and family life. That has begun to change, Smith says. ‘Since the early 1980s there has been a renaissance of storytelling, as a community art and as a way of learning. I think people are concerned that older, human and humane values may be lost, local cultures, local languages. That is part of it. But that would be to depict it as almost reactionary. Alongside that is a passionate desire to shape that sense of common human values, progressive, positive values, that are global, that are for human beings everywhere. I suppose that storytelling, in its incredible ancientness in our culture and our way of thinking, comes to the fore if we’re struggling to know what it is we share. There’s been huge change, summarised by this word “globalisation”, but there’s also this huge struggle for a sense of universal human values, and that’s a positive struggle. If we don’t sort it out planet Earth will burn out quite soon, so there’s quite a need for all that. And yet you don’t do that by eradicating all
the wonderful human differences. That’s not the kind of globalisation we want. We want to celebrate diversity. You’ve got natural ecology where you’re trying to sustain biological diversity and the inter-dynamic of life, and storytelling seems to me to be a kind of cultural ecology where you’re trying to do the same kinds of things but with human language and emotion. I don’t think that’s a casual analogy.’
Informal ethos
The Scottish Storytelling Forum brings together people who are enthusiastic about storytelling, not only professional storytellers but also teachers, librarians, carers, social workers, tour guides and others who see storytelling as central to their work. The Scottish Storytelling Centre offers regular workshops and programmes of training and development for aspiring and experienced storytellers alike. The ethos of the work was always group-based and informal, says Smith. ‘That’s how storytellers develop and emerge, from working with stories, and sharing with other people who are interested in stories.’ But it was also clear that people using storytelling in their workplaces were keen on
the idea of a more formal course or qualification in storytelling. There can never be a qualification for being a storyteller, Smith says – ‘storytellers are made by life’ – but there can be a qualification that helps people develop as storytellers and learn more about storytelling. That was where Newbattle came in. ‘Between Newbattle and ourselves, and the Scottish Qualification Authority framework, we’ve designed something that is unique, that reacts to the nature of the storytelling experience, while providing a structure and discipline so that people who want to relate that in a thought-through way to their own work can do so. It’s quite an interesting marriage of art and formal learning.’ The course, which is supported by the Scottish Funding Council, consists of two units, one on contemporary storytelling, the other on developing a project, and covers areas such as effective oral presentation, story sourcing and analysing the purposes of oral storytelling within different professional contexts. Students attend the college for two residential weekends, with self-directed study in between. Rae McGhee, Heritage Development Officer at the college and one of the course’s initial in-take of students, was
‘Born and bred on stories’
Alan Bruford recording Duncan Williamson at the School of Scottish Studies
School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh
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