The Heart of Storytelling

Alyssa Curtayne
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In this podcast, we will explore the art of oral storytelling; looking at its history, its relevance today and discovering storytellers who are passionate about bringing stories to you in the oral form. Each week we hear from a new storyteller who will bring a story to life and share their journey into this traditional artform.

  1. 2D AGO

    Joanna Gilar and Ecological Dreaming

    Dr Joanna Gilar is a writer and storyteller with a PhD in fairy tales and ecological storytelling from the University of Chichester. She is founder and director of StoryCommons CIC, a fairy tale collective dedicated to building resilience via story. Their projects include Rewilding Cinderella, a collaboration of 14 artists, poets and storytellers from minoritized communities across the UK to celebrate the wild diversity of Cinder stories.Joanna is visiting lecturer in children’s and young adult literature at the University of Roehampton, and has taught courses and workshops on fairy tales and storytelling since 2016. She is co-editor of The World Treasury of Fairy Tales and Folklore (Wellfleet Press, 2016), and has published numerous articles on rewilding fairy tales. As a storyteller, she has performed across the UK and Europe, in venues ranging from festivals to universities, Italian castles to Bohemian forests. She has created land-based, wild-story performances for ONCA, Into the Wild, Queer Spirit, Treadwells and Advaya. Her performances have been described as “spell-binding”, “breath-taking”, “astonishing” and “a gift.”www.wildstorycommons.orgwww.joannagilar.com

    56 min

  2. FEB 5

    Clinton Atwater and Being Responsive

    Our guest today is Clinton Atwater, founder of Storytelling Connections and a storyteller who truly embodies the belief that stories are bridges between hearts and minds. Clinton's journey began around a Michigan campfire, where family stories sparked a lifelong passion for the oral tradition. But his path wasn't direct—he spent years as a Pharmacy Operations Manager before discovering his authentic voice through Toastmasters and eventually stepping into the storytelling world.What makes Clinton special isn't just his performances at festivals, schools, and libraries, but his dedication to empowering others. Through his storytelling community "Let Me Tell Ya!", he creates spaces where both seasoned storytellers and newcomers can share their voices. When COVID threatened live storytelling, he didn't hesitate—he brought the community online, proving that stories can connect us even across distance. This year, Clinton received the ORACLE Award from the National Storytelling Network, recognizing his tireless work building the Mid-Atlantic storytelling community.But at its heart, Clinton's work is about something deeper than entertainment—it's about the fundamental human need to be heard, understood, and connected.www.StorytellingConnections.comhttps://linqapp.com/clinton_atwater?r=linkhttps://www.facebook.com/storytelling.connectionshttps://www.instagram.com/storytelling.connections/

    46 min

  3. JAN 22

    Louise Phillips and Research with Story

    Louise Gwenneth Phillips is a professional storyteller, coach, consultant, teacher, researcher, author and honorary Associate Professor in the School of Education, The University of Queensland. Her research and publications focus on story(tell)ing, children’s rights and citizenship, arts and rights-based pedagogies and methodologies (see https://louptales.education/publications/).She is particularly enchanted by the lore of everyday folk which have been told from person to person across generations and millennia. To hold and embrace this wisdom, Louise crafts global folktales into hankies and scarfs, so you can keep the wisdom of the story close to you.Email: louise@louptales.education

    45 min

  4. JAN 8

    Liz Weir and the Strength in Stories

    Having told stories since 1973, storytelling has played a major part in her life and has taken Liz to five continents. Recently she attended the Marrakech International Storytelling Festival  with 100 tellers from 33 countries where she took part in the successful attempt to break the World Record for the longest continuous oral  storytelling session - 80 hours and 35 minutes.https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/01/165264/marrakech-breaks-guinness-world-record-for-longest-storytelling-session/As she started telling stories in Belfast during our "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, a time when violence was raging on the streets, Liz learned how important the art of storytelling can be as it can encourage people to listen to each other. Listening to stories which may be very different from our own shows respect , and respect can lead to dialogue which can often lead to the peaceful resolution of conflict.She wrote an article about it here https://storynet.org/out-of-the-tunnel-and-into-the-light-of-peace/Liz is the Storyteller in Residence for a charity which promotes storytelling throughout Northern Ireland and her current focus is on training people from both sides of the Irish Border to tell stories - see https://www.armstory.org.uk/projects/border-talk-She does a lot of intergenerational storytelling, bringing our young people and elders together to promote this invaluable intangible art.  Storytelling is a living tradition and we must inspire our young people to continue the rich tradition. It celebrates cultural diversity and hence encourages communication between people of all backgrounds.For more information, see her website:Liz Weir – Storyteller | Writer

    49 min

  5. 12/25/2025

    Christina Cairns and the Creative Process

    Christina Cairns is a visual artist/writer/performer/song-writer/storyteller.  She is a member of the Great Southern Storytellers and a frequent storyteller at their monthly story gatherings. She has told many stories to appreciative audiences in Denmark over the years.She is fascinated most of all by the power of story, the tales we tell ourselves, tales handed down generation to generation, and how these layers upon layers of story change across time, and shape us and the world we live in. She is inspired especially by fairytales, folklore and mythology, and likes to look at stories from new or different points of view, exploring the what-ifs and the if-onlys.There are no boundaries between the different aspects of her work; music and songwriting influence her artwork, poetry informs theatre ideas, theatre ideas bleed into visual works, and back again.  She is also just a little obsessed with books, creating small, hand made and hand stitched illustrated booklets of poetry and storytelling.Christina writes and performs original song/storytelling shows. Her three solo shows The Wolf Bride, Fables and Treesong have featured at the Denmark Festival of Voice and Brave New Works; Windborne, a co-production with writer Linda Bradbury, was featured at the 2019 Denmark Festival of Voice, and she has most recently written and performed The Descent of Persephone at the 2025 Denmark Brave New Works Festival, in collaboration with Silvia Lehmann, another member of GSS.Christina holds a Diploma in Graphic Design and BA in Theatre and Literature. She lives with her family on the beautiful south coast of Western Australia, in Denmark, a little town that lies between forests of magnificent Karri trees and the Great Southern Ocean.To contact, please email her at greatsouthernstorytellers@gmail.com

    40 min

  6. 12/11/2025

    Silvia Lehmann and Old Wisdom of Tales

    Silvia Lehmann – Storyteller, Theatre Director, Community Facilitator Silvia holds a BA (Hons) and Graduate Diploma in Theatre Directing, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne Australia (1995). She has lived in the small coastal town of Denmark in Western Australia for 17 years and regularly runs creative writing, acting, somatic movement and storytelling workshops. Silvia has facilitated many cross-artform community performance projects, including Living Testament (2016), The Fisherman and His Wife (2018), and The Spindle of Spoken Story, a 7-month storyteller development programme devised and delivered together with Nicola-Jane le Breton (2019). Silvia was playwright for Movementworks’ adaption of The Yellow Wallpaper (2011) and playwrighting coordinator/mentor on Feet First Collective’s Medusa (2024). Over 2023 Silvia worked on a concept of adaptation of the Baroque opera The Fairy Queen for Denmark Baroque. In 2023 Silvia created Great Southern Storytellers (GSS) together with Jeff Atkinson and Christina Cairns, telling traditional, mytho-poetic tales. GSS has run monthly storytelling circles in Denmark since November 2023, and holds regular storytelling workshops for the community.To contact her, email greatsouthernstorytellers@gmail.com

    58 min

  7. 11/27/2025

    Claire Hennessy and Telling Tall Tales

    British-born Claire Hennessy is co-founder/producer of Six Feet Apart Productions, producing online and in-person storytelling shows and festivals. She was a recipient of a 2024 NSN Oracle Award. She’s a GrandSlam finalist at The Moth, the National Storytelling Festival, and West Side Stories. She was a featured teller at the 2024 St Louis Storytelling Festival, the 2021 and 2024 Women’s Storytelling Festivals and the 2023 Sacramento Valley Storytelling Festival. She helps organize the Bay Area Storytelling Festival and is a Board Member of the Storytelling Association of California. She’s performed on The Risk! Podcast, Better Said Than Done, Good Liar’s Club, Moonshine Stories, among others. She is hoping to find an agent for her humorous memoir before she is too old to go on a book tour.You can find out more about Claire at: Six Feet Apart ProductionsStorytelling Association of CaliforniaThe Bonkers Brit

    49 min

  8. 11/13/2025

    Jeff Atkinson and A Life of Deep Meaning

    Jeff is a storyteller from the edge of the known world or, if you prefer, a small town on the South Coast of Western Australia called Denmark.  He  runs a monthly community storytelling circle and is involved in running rights of passage ceremonies, in men's work and gatherings at which he has been known to tell a story or two.  Jeff has a keen interest in the intersection of story, myth and ritual.Jeff spent twenty years telling small stories with finely honed words often serving questionable ends.  Hitting middle-age and embarking on the inward journey that often begins at that time of life, he has come to understand that his calling is to spread bigger, grander stories in service of the goal of re-enchanting the world by re-kindling our imaginations.You can find out more about Jeff by emailing him at greatsouthernstorytellers@gmail.com

    48 min
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About

In this podcast, we will explore the art of oral storytelling; looking at its history, its relevance today and discovering storytellers who are passionate about bringing stories to you in the oral form. Each week we hear from a new storyteller who will bring a story to life and share their journey into this traditional artform.

Information

  • Creator
    Alyssa Curtayne
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    71
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Alyssa Curtayne
  • Show Website
    The Heart of Storytelling