Students from the 3 week Personal Storytelling Course in Amari last October gazing into the flames. When I was at school, I learnt that the discovery of fire was an importance step for human beings because it enabled us to keep warm, scare wild animals away at night and if we caught any, cook and […]
Every year in The Netherlands, people celebrate the Festival of St Nicholas on December 6th. St Nicholas was originally a Bishop from Myra in Turkey, famous for his secret gift giving. It’s easy to see how he became so widely loved as Santa Claus which actually means Saint Nick. In the Netherlands from mid November right […]
One afternoon last year I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen having a cup of tea. She has two children and a business that she runs from home. We had been catching up on our lives after not seeing each other for about a year and I was listening to her stories of the school […]
I recently heard an illuminating reflection on the core work of telling a story from your own life. One of the biggest differences between telling a traditional story and telling a true one from your own life is that when you tell a traditional story, a lot of time is spent imagining the landscape, the characters, […]
Recently I was in Germany working for a large corporate client on storytelling and presence for senior leaders. Unusually, the group was all men and all of them had a strong scientific background…
It’s been an interesting experience to begin to create a worldwide personal storytelling community from the UK at this time. Immediately after I conceived of the idea, Brexit happened and the UK voted to leave the European Union. Much of the dialogue and debate around the vote was based on fears…
Several people have asked me in the past year since I left the International School of Storytelling what made me decide to change from working with all kinds of stories to specialising in true life stories. Whilst I was working at the Amari School of Storytelling in Crete earlier this year, the answer was simply…
