Storytelling is our oldest art form and continues to engage our imagination, enrich our lives, and strengthen our collective experience. Oral storytelling is a carrier of heritage, values and beliefs and provides individuals and communities with a sense of common history and belonging. It is the glue in a whole series of socio-cultural processes that can make people more creative, imaginative, participative, and inclusive.
Storytelling can engage people, foster emotional connections, stimulate critical thinking, and inspire action. Creative collaborative storytelling techniques are used in democratic and participative processes, oral techniques for speech and advocacy.
Through projects, course development and networking, FEST invests into capacity building of the storyteller for engagement in local initiatives such as ‘creative Communities’, ‘culture in the neighbourhood’, ‘artists in community residence’, initiated by NGOs, local authorities, museums, CCIs, etc.

The Challenge:

• A need for recognition of the power of storytelling in social processes
• A need for cooperation with other organisations that could benefit from storytelling as a tool.
• A need for upskilling of the storyteller, depending on the new target group (didactic skills, social skills …)
• A need to introduce storytelling techniques in historic sites, natural and cultural heritage, museums.

Target Groups/Clients:

Storytellers, artists, community workers, adult educators, local authorities.

Solutions:

Capacity building, training, networking.

Innovation:

Applied art, cross sectorial cooperation, competence-oriented approach, participative approach, artists as facilitators in communities.

Impact:

• Storytellers will develop new competences as a socially engaged artist and as an entrepreneur; they will learn how to use their skills to effectively work on inclusion, sustainability, heritage interpretation, cultural & civic participation, and social wellbeing.
• Adult educators, entrepreneurs and community workers will learn how to work with artists in a community context.

Resources:

1. The Village Storytelling Centre Glasgow:

https://www.villagestorytelling.org.uk/ 

2. Creative Community projects Glasgow phase 1

https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/media/5007/glasgows-creative-communities.pdf

3. Creative Community projects Glasgow phase 3

https://inspiringscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Research-Scotland-External-Evaluation-Creative-Communities-Phase-3.pdf

Partnering Organisation:
FEST
https://fest-network.eu/fest-gallery/