In October 2010, in a preview of Turku's year as European City of Culture in 2011, there was a storytelling festival called Nordic Voices.
Some friends had been to a couple of events and were really impressed, so I took myself along the finale event - and evening of storytelling with 10 storytellers from Northern Europe. Each told a story, mostly in their own language - including Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Greenlandic Inuit and English.
I am not a linguist, I struggle with Finnish, which is the language of my chosen home country, despite learning it on and off since 1996. However, I understood every one of those stories.
It was a cold evening and the venue was by the river. I remember it so well. When the weather is really cold, the river runs slow and dark and the water is smooth - the reflections from the apartments and the power station across the river are almost perfect. Walking home from the performance I was full - full of stories, full of joy and excitement and my head was buzzing with ideas - I could do this! I can tell stories, I can share the joy of storytelling with other people, the language is not the most important thing, it's the image you create with your voice, your expressions, your body language - that's where the stories come from.
I had discovered something I could do in Finland without needing Finnish!
That same week, I attended two workshop days intended for teachers but as I am not a teacher, I left it to fate and chose the workshop group with the least people attending. It was run by Claire Hewitt, an English storyteller based in Scotland. We played storytelling games and we made a bag from felt - handcrafting while we listened and told.
Claire and I struck up a friendship and she has become my Mentor in this journey.
And so it began.... I simply told all my friends and family that I was going to be a storyteller and I started telling stories - as simple as that!
At every opportunity I listened to English storytellers and attended workshops when available. I talked to people working with stories, storytellers and storytelling festivals. I began hosting a monthly story cafe where anyone could come and share stories in a any language.
Every now & then, when other English speaking Storytellers were visiting, I would arrange formal and informal performances and sharings.
After a while I started going into schools and telling stories in English to children who were native speakers, or were learning English. These sessions expanded into Storytelling clubs for students to practice storytelling skills. In the last year or so I have begun running storytelling workshops for teachers who would like to use storytelling in language (and other) classes.
So, what next....
