With a background in Community Education, my storytelling practice is steeped in group-work facilitation and storytelling as a tool for development, connection and empowerment.
Hailing from the Scottish Highlands, I come from a lineage of natural storytellers, and am fascinated by the wild northern tales of Scotland, Scandinavia, Ireland, the Baltics and Siberia.
I also like to pick up stories from places visited such as India, West Africa, United States, Canada, Romania, Norway, Italy, Czech republic etc.
Telling stories professionally for over 10 years, I have a wide repertoire of tales and have become renowned for my warm demeanour and engaging style of telling, with lots of audience interaction and rhythmic accompaniment.
I especially love telling in outdoor environments and unusual settings and often devise outdoor learning sessions with storytelling at heart.
As well as delivering hundreds of storytelling programmes in schools, museums, libraries and community venues, I have performed at some of the most prestigious storytelling festivals and events in the UK such as SISF (the Scottish International Storytelling Festival), FatE (Festival at the Edge), Village Storytelling Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I have accepted storytelling invitations to Germany, Lithuania and Ireland.
(Book me for a storytelling event via: dougie@storyconnection.org)
Recent storytelling highlights include:
- Animate Lands
Commissioned by Interpreting Scotland, and exploration into relationship between story and landscape and how the Fianna myth cycle offer glimpses into an ancient animistic culture on these islands. - Rekindling the Hearth
Part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, a series of storytelling and nature connection events following the seasonal cycle and mixing storytelling and nature based crafts - Wolf Tracks and Tales
The wolf is often the villain in folk tales. This project seeks to rebalance the narratives, combining wolf tracking experience and ecology with folk tale and myth. - Mugwort and the Cave of Dreams
In partnership with the Oak, Ash and Thorn Hub (oath), a day workshop diving deep into a Scottish dreaming story whilst working with Mugwort, the traditional herb of lucid dreaming. - Omois Ois: Honouring the Deer
Offering a storytelling element focusing on deer tales to support the excellent work of Wild Awake Ireland and Rekindled Hearth.
In recent years I have developed storytelling training for beginner and intermediate storytellers, and gained a mentoring qualification through the Traditional Arts Mentoring scheme.
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As well as entertainment and conection to culture and landscape, I am passionate about stories as tools for reflection and personal insight.
Inspired by characters such as Michael Meade, Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Martin Shaw, I run a “Myth as Medicine” course, offering a chance to bathe in a selection of ancient myths and use them to guide participants in day to day life.
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. The swift raven, the sharpened axe, the soft hairs of the mouse’s belly, all were interconnected if you looked long enough.
Martin Shaw, Branch from the Lightning Tree
Find out about Myth as Medicine here:
Finally, I am increasingly keen to partner with practitioners of bushcraft, primitive skills and other regenerative practices.
Combining storytelling can easily form synergistic relationships with other crafts and combining with practical experiences can offer an additional richness to an audience or participant.
email: dougie@storyconnection.org
A wee taster video of me telling as story of a magical tree for Wildhood Festival:
Dougie Mackay Storyteller 