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With centuries of traditional storytelling leaving an astonishing heritage, both globally and within specific local cultures, how has it been developed into a recognised artform over recent years? Donald Smith and Joanna Bremner explain the growth and popularity of storytelling.

Storytelling is a particular kind of narrative art, as much about the telling as it is about the story. It lives dangerously in the interaction between teller and audience, both of whom are vital to an act of shared communication. As the Scottish Traveller proverb has it, the story is told ?eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart?. This kind of communication can range from gossip, anecdote and joke, through folktales short and long, to complex finely wrought poetic masterworks. In traditional societies storytelling encompasses all these levels from neighbourly get-togethers (house ceilidhs in the Scottish Highlands) to performance epics at courtly feasts or religious festivals.

Contemporary renaissance

The last twenty-five years have seen the re-emergence of storytelling as a visible, recognised artform within developed societies, including France, the USA, the Nordic countries, Scotland, England, Ireland, Israel, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In Africa and many Asian countries storytelling has remained vital, while even in industrialised societies the resurgence has brought surviving minority traditions to light.

Renaissance always has a motive and many commentators have pointed to a reaction against globalisation and the commercialisation of culture ? the artist as celebrity and the audience as consumers. It is certainly true that new storytellers have formed alliances with environmental campaigners, folk revivalists and new-agers, as well as within the community arts and local heritage. The reliance of storytelling on the purely human resources of eye, ear, voice, gesture and memory gives it a very personal or communal sense of ownership. But the official institutions ? schools, arts councils and national museums ? have also supported storytelling, recognising its potential to engage, entertain and inform. At the same time the broadcast media have moved in the direction of informality and vocal diversity, so foregrounding what are essentially storytelling skills, albeit at one remove. A purely revivalist model cannot explain the raft of changes in communication styles that have favoured storytelling?s re-emergence.

Support structures

What are storytelling?s support structures? Who and where are the audiences? Our answers to these questions follow the Scottish example, but most parts of the model have parallels elsewhere.

? The storytellers: The emergence of individuals as storytellers is the key to the revival. The new storytellers include people of all ages and backgrounds who wish to tell as a professional activity, community-based storytellers, and people within a wide range of professions who use storytelling skills in their working lives.

? Schools and libraries: Educators are increasingly aware of the benefits of storytelling as a medium of both teaching and creative expression. Many storytellers earn their ?bread and butter? working with children in schools, libraries and community projects. Stories become the starting point for a wealth of imaginative and intellectual exploration.

? Festivals: Storytelling festivals have mushroomed over the last decade. Most combine a local identity (Shetland or Devon) with a diversity of visiting tellers and traditions. The festivals provide a showcase for individual tellers, and enable local activists to advance year-round storytelling programmes. Most festivals include children?s or family events around an adult mainstream.

? Clubs: The Crick Crack Club in London, Yarnspinners in Belfast and Dublin, Guid Crack Club in Edinburgh and Even Better Crack in Glasgow are prominent examples of regular adult audiences. Although all clubs feature guest artists, there is usually generous participation from the floor, so enabling new voices to be heard.

? Networks: Storytelling is by definition not a mass-market activity so it depends on networking among enthusiasts with further promotion through arts and tourism outlets and community projects. The Scottish Storytelling Centre?s network is the main means in Scotland by which storytellers relate to each other, and supplement their own marketing by promoting storytelling as a whole. Web marketing adds a complementary dimension to this multi-faceted approach by both linking and marketing storytellers.

? Training: Storytelling is at home in the training culture, since it fosters transferable skills and enables communication. Not all storytellers are trainers, but the most successful professionals tend to combine workshops and performances. Clients range from corporates in search of shared values and envisioning, through health care and environmental projects, to community development, the arts, faith communities, social work, literacy initiatives, age-care centres, museums and libraries. Storytellers also provide their own market since most are eager to acquire new skills and approaches.

? The Scottish Storytelling Centre: Scotland has a special asset in its designated centre for storytelling at the Netherbow in Edinburgh?s Royal Mile. The job of the centre is to support storytellers, promote storytelling, organise training, facilitate new development and research, and administer the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. The centre combines the skills and experience of the storytellers (who guide its artistic policies through the Scottish Storytelling Forum) with professional arts management. This gets things done because funders and other outside bodies have a recognised agency with which to deal. The centre has enjoyed the consistent support of the Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh City Council and the Church of Scotland which owns the Netherbow buildings. At present the centre has ambitious plans to expand its facilities and raise the public profile of storytelling.

The power of story

The art of storytelling demonstrates in an immediate way the power of narrative to influence, entertain and motivate. But this experience has implications for many areas of contemporary culture. Who owns and controls stories in our society? How do they deploy them and why? Do organisations function better if they recognise and foster the human dimension of storytelling through genuinely two-way communication? Or are many interests in our society really committed, sometimes from the best of motives, to manipulation and propaganda? Whose voices and whose stories are to be heard?

Good storytellers touch on the most intimate springs of our humanity by the most personal and humane of methods. In the process they cast a sometimes surprising light on the ownership and powers of narrative. What kind of story are you trying to tell, and to whom? As Socrates might have said, "The unexamined story may not be worth the telling." Of course, for many that is not a conscious motivation: they enjoy storytelling because, well actually, it?s really good fun. Could that be why it has survived for hundreds of years to flourish again?

Donald Smith is Director and Joanna Bremner is Storytelling Co-ordinator at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. t: 0131 557 5724; e: netherbow-storytelling@dial.pipex.com; w: http://www.storytellingcentre.org.uk