Event Category: Storytelling

Sharon Jacksties takes you on a pan-European mythological journey that ends in Britain and Ireland, a melting pot of our Celtic, Classical and Norse heritage. A traditional storyteller for several, but never enough decades, she will be telling stories from her latest book in which she has journeyed from being a writer of folk tale anthologies to this immersion in the myths of Gods and Goddesses. Join her as she gives a voice to our mythological landscape that speaks to us across the ages…

Layer by layer, talking through time itself, these tales of the ancient gods and goddesses make up the bedrock of the mythological landscapes of these islands. Through the ages this has been the meeting place of successive cultures, each bringing their own stories to glorify those beings with super human powers. Despite their immortality, these divinities are nevertheless vulnerable, depending on the voices and memories of people to celebrate their wondrous exploits. This evening you will meet some of the divinities once revered throughout Britain and Ireland, not through lists in some dusty encyclopaedia, but through the stories of their deeds, famous and infamous in equal part. The listener will enjoy the tales themselves and in the unfolding insights they bring to the different cultures that they represent.

Bio

Sharon Jacksties www.sharonjackstories.co.uk has been a professional storyteller for over 30 years. She runs storytelling projects with all kinds of groups in Somerset, London and Romania, and regularly teaches storytelling at Halsway Manor, England’s only residential centre for the traditional arts. She has won the national Crick Crack Grand Lying competition twice and is the author of three previous folk tales volumes.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

There is everyday magic in the tales of London. Some stories are swirling in the waters of the Thames; some are hidden in the old stones that lie beneath our modern pavements. In London Folk Tales f Anne and Sef have gathered stories from the words and memories of Londoners past and present. They tell of the mighty river, the streets, and the hills of London. You’ll find stories of babies that turn into flowers, of tower ravens and a two-headed bird, and a child who has to travel across the world all alone. You’ll also meet the people of this welcoming city: ever since the Romans, people have come here from all over the world to become Londoners. They’ve brought delicious foods, new music and hundreds of languages, but, most of all, great stories – London stories.

Sef Townsend draws on his personal experience of living and working on all five continents; and on reminiscence and language support work in immigrant and refugee communities to inform his storytelling and music.

He has been running Arts projects with people in exile and immigrant communities since 1995. Through storytelling, song and ‘join-in’ music games he emphasises the use of traditional material from the participants’ original backgrounds, and promotes work that enables other cultures to be seen as an invaluable resource contributing to a shared diversity in the wider community.

He has devised and presented several of his own radio programmes on traditional music and oral history including programmes for BBC Radio 3, Spectrum Radio and Radio 4’s “Woman’s Hour”

Suffolk may seem a kindly and civilised place, but away from gentle rolling fields – in the wild eroding sea, in the waving reed beds, the tangled woods and even down dark town streets lurk secret tales. Hear stories shaped by generations of Suffolk mardle and wit: storyteller Kirsty Hartsiotis will take you into a hidden world of green children and wild men, tell the strange secret of Black Shuck and the romantic tale of the county’s last dragon … proving you’re never far from a story in Suffolk.

There’s always been this jib that Suffolk doesn’t have many traditional stories – but Kirsty isn’t having any of that, after all, she (and Cherry, her partner for Suffolk Ghost Tales) have retold 60 of them already! Some of our most iconic fairy tales – like Rumpelstiltskin and Cinderella – have distinctly different Suffolk equivalents, and there’s a rich strain of seriously strange medieval and early modern stories set in the county. Fairies abound, there are ghosts of course, and Black Shuck isn’t the only beastie you might meet on a dark night…

Picture Credit, Green Girl, Katherine Soutar

Bio

Kirsty Hartsiotis, who is originally from Suffolk, has been a storyteller for more than twenty years, both solo and with her group Fire Springs. She came to storytelling with a lifelong love of stories and history, and a background in drama, heritage and education. She’s also a writer, and is the author of Suffolk Folk Tales and, with Cherry Wilkinson, Suffolk Ghost Tales, as well as a number of other folk tale collections. With her other hat on, she’s a museum curator, curating the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection at a Gloucestershire museum, and an Accredited Arts Society lecturer in art history – and folklore.

Rivers and streams sculpt our landscape, and have connected our communities throughout history, from mountain to estuary and to the wide sea beyond. They give us water and food, trade and transport, yet they have a life-force all of their own.

Lisa Schneidau has collected traditional folk tales from wild rivers, lakes, and streams for her new book River Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press). Here are old stories of danger and transformation, river goddesses, ghosts and mysterious creatures that dwell in the watery arteries of these islands. They tell of the power and energy of water through our landscape, and the price to be paid for neglect and pollution.

Bio

Lisa Schneidau is a storyteller and environmentalist based on Dartmoor. She seeks out, and shares, traditional stories about the land and our complex relationship with it. Lisa is the author of Woodland Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press, 2020) and Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (History Press, 2018). She tells stories at events, nature reserves, arts centres and schools, including performance storytelling, training and storytelling development within education, as well as helping to run South Devon Storytellers and Dartmoor Storytellers. Lisa trained as an ecologist and has worked in British nature conservation for over twenty years, in roles as diverse as farm advisor, lobbyist and conservation director. http://www.lisaschneidau.co.uk

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Buddhist Folk Tales

Join Kevin on his personal journey through Buddhism as he shares with you; tales from previous lives, tales both ancient and modern, tales of talking animals, tales to make you weep, laugh and cry and tales that will stay with you when the telling has ceased.  Here are lyrical stories telling the birth of Buddha and also how the current Dali Lama was found. There are humorous stories…why the King of the Monkeys wanted to rule the universe, the archer who changed his king’s whole outlook on life and a talkative turtle trying to fly with the birds. Most of the stories are from the Jataka cycle, stories from over two thousand years ago, told by Buddha about his previous lives. Some of these are well known, some of them influenced western writers, as it is believed the soldiers of Alexander the Great and other travellers may have brought them back, so we have stories similar to The Golden Goose, The Lion and the Mouse and even Chicken Licken. Many of the stories deal with the human condition and are quite deep, almost distressing at times. And there is an original story written by my good self, that brings together research about the ‘missing years’ of Jesus. Over forty stories in all and many illustrations.

Bio

Kevin Walker has been a professional, oral storyteller for over twenty years, working with most age groups and performing at clubs, festivals, historic venues and schools. Recently he has taken a retirement sabbatical to concentrate on writing and published Queer Folk Tales in 2020 and has his next collection of stories, Buddhist Folk Tales, published in February 2022. He is also working on his first novel, based on folk tales, Shadows and Light, the life of Oberon, the King of Faerie and another collection of Queer Tales based mainly on medieval documents.

He is raring to get back to telling.

He lives at the moment, in Leicester with his husband Martyn and Daisy dog, but they are all getting itchy feet so will be moving soon.

THE SONG IS IN THE STORY – Or Vice Versa

Folk Tales of Song and Dance from Pete Castle

In this set Pete Castle will explore musical stories and storytelling songs, mainly from the English tradition but with a few visitors from further a-field. There will be stories about musicians and their adventures—which haven’t changed much over millennia, and also stories in which your normal Tom, Dick or Harry uses music to get himself out of a tricky situation. Pete will include a couple of traditional ballads which tell the same kinds of stories in musical form.

Throughout history storytelling and songs have been intertwined. Songs have told stories, stories have included songs, an item in one art form has been rewritten in the other. In many cultures storytelling is often accompanied by musicians or even dancers. In Britain the Welsh and Irish bards were usually harpers who sang and it seemed a prerequisite of a Celtic leader to also be a musician. This was widespread, King David, in the Bible, was a musician who composed psalms. It doesn’t seem to have applied to the English though. Can you think of any musical English king/queen (apart, perhaps, from Henry VIII)? Can you imagine the present Royal Family getting together for a singaround!?

BIOGRAPHY

Pete Castle was born in Ashford, Kent in 1947 but has lived in Derbyshire for most of his adult life and considers that home. He trained as a teacher but in 1978 gave that up to pursue a career as a professional folk singer playing folk clubs and festivals, which he has done ever since. A few years into that career he discovered storytelling and started billing himself as a ‘folksinger and storyteller’. He has always been willing to restrict himself to one or the other is asked but much prefers to do a mixture of the two. He has worked with every type of audience imaginable in a wide variety of venues from clubs to festivals, schools, libraries, on story walks, in historical sites and many more. He has taught and lectured for local authorities, the WEA, the Workers Music Association and so on. He is one of the few English artists to be invited to perform at the Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington DC.

Since 1999 Pete has edited the storytelling magazine Facts & Fiction.

In 2010 he was invited by The History Press to write Derbyshire Folk Tales for their county folk tales series. To his surprise he enjoyed being an author and followed it with Nottinghamshire Folk Tales (2012); Where Dragons Soar, animal folk tales (2016); and most recently Folk Tales of Song and Dance (2021)

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day