Do you love stories? Silly question really, everyone loves stories, right?

Human language has evolved through telling stories. We share ancestors who huddled around fires, fending off the darkness with tales of the hunt, adventure, and danger, wisdom, humour, and the supernatural.

With our brains hard-wired for story, live storytelling is making a modern resurgence and the impact of storytelling is celebrated everywhere from scientific journals, theatres, classrooms and the world of business.

Storytelling is useful to people who:

Believe excellent stories make the world a better place

Value wonder, curiosity and a sense of adventure

Communicate creatively

Want to create little moments of magic

Value “off screen” entertainment

Promote social connection and interaction

Appreciate ancient traditions and styles of teaching

Want to access diverse world-views and perspectives.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Albert Einstein

I offer storytelling experience through:

There was a time, the myths tell us, when the link between animals, humans, and the land was fluid, magical. The perception of community would extend out, both into the landscape and through the stories seeping up from the burial grounds of your ancestors.

Martin Shaw, Branch From the Lightning Tree

Storytelling means many things to different people, but to me:

Storytelling is best told live
“Eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart”, as the Scottish travellers say.

It creates a unique moment with an audience that can’t be replicated.

The spoken word offers an intimacy and fluidity that are lost page or screen.

It empowers people to participate in the narratives as they happen.

Folk tales, myths and legends.

Why do I tell fantastical stories from times past?

• These tales have stood the test of time and present timeless themes at the heart of the human experience.
• They offer a space of wonder in an often mundane modern world.
• They can be enjoyed as simple entertainment, or explored as poetic mirrors reflecting aspects our own lives.
• Old cultures preserved the best of their knowledge and understanding through story, they knew the kids would listen if it was entertaining.
• They connect us to lands and cultures around the world.
• They’re fun.

Folk tales also offer a way of connecting with traditional cultures. Indigenous cultures were often oral rather than literary. Literature often presents ideas as seen by an educated, male, outsiders, if you want to know how a traditional culture saw the world, their stories offer the best insight.

Storytelling, Nature Connection (and Regenerative Culture)

Increasingly I deliver storytelling work outdoors, using storytelling to promote outdoor learning, primitive survival skills and nature connection.

I can geek out on stories all day, but in short, I think that stories are an essential feature of a healthy human culture. We need better stories and better storytellers and there is an opportunity to create a better world through harnessing this age old craft and recognising its gentle power.

Einstein, Steiner and others of high repute felt similarly.

You might want to book me to bring storytelling to your group or event or even get in touch to train to be a better storyteller yourself.

Email: dougie@storyconnection.org to make a booking