Restorying the Earth

This is a cross-over episode with the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network's (SCCAN) podcast 1000 Better Stories.  This episode is hosted by SCCAN Storyweaver, Kaska Hempel, who interviews me about the Shifting the Narrative Project.

Shifting the Narrative is a research project I led at the University of Edinburgh from January 2022 until June 2022 engaging with over 50 storytellers who work with stories in relation to nature crises, nature connection, community and social change work, and environmental education.  In these six months we collected and synthesised the experiences and wisdom of this group of people to come up with some good practice recommendations for communicators more generally.

We found that dialogue is integral to traditional and performance storytelling and that most storytellers working in this area integrate some form of dialogue into their practice.  The research also highlighted that the flexibility of stories to interpretation is story's super-power, enabling listeners to meet story wherever they are.  Live performances create community at least for the duration of the event, while allowing diversity in interpretation.  These key findings challenge mainstream communication around nature crises, which emphasise reaching as many people as possible through broadcast forms of storytelling and ensuring clear messaging.

The University team consisted of myself (Alette Willis), Ramsey Affifi and Jule Hildmann in Education and Arno Verhoeven from the Edinburgh College of Art.

Our Community Partners:

COP26 is going on just up the road in Glasgow and the Scottish weather has turned cold and rainy.  I felt a need for something nourishing this week and figured that you might too, so I asked Australian storyteller Megan Ward to share a story of nature connection and healing with us.  Megan recently told this story live and in person at the New Economy Network Conference--Growing a Wellbeing Economy for Australia.

Megan writes: "My life has been influenced by a love of nature and a curious mind, with the need to understand and a thirst for knowledge. A scientist, yogini and naturalist, immersing myself in nature and witnessing the interconnectedness through the web of life, I now share the stories we have forgotten."

We are on the eve of COP26 here in Scotland, and today I am joined by Emmanuela Yogolelo from Manchester who is going to talk to me about her work with story and climate justice.  Emmanuela is a well known singer and musician known for her voice, harmonies, unique melodies and now storytelling and interactive performances.  Her music draws on her cultural roots in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and she has been instrumental in co-developing 'Amani Creatives' in Manchester, which nourishes, celebrates and promotes African arts and culture and African artists in the city and beyond.

Emmanuela has been commissioned by HOME arts centre in Manchester and Community Arts North West to put together an interactive live performance which will debut this Friday, October 29th (2021).  In this piece she will explore climate justice activism through a range of art forms including music and storytelling.  Hello, Emmanuela and welcome to the Restorying the Earth Podcast.

Emmanuela would really like to hear from others working in the area of arts and climate justice.  She is open to feedback, collaborations and more.  Please get in touch with her through her website.

In this episode, I speak with my friend and colleague Allison Galbraith.  Allison and I co-wrote Dancing with Trees: Eco-Tales of the British Isles and she has recently launched her book Lanarkshire Folktales.  Allison is a storyteller, student of folklore, voice artist and author.  She has backgrounds as an actor and as a teacher of pupils with additional support needs.  She joined me from her cottage just outside of Lanark in Scotland to talk about how storytelling can help make STEM education more accessible and equitable.  Our conversation took us from her work on storytelling and climate change with local farmers through to a recent project at Culzean Castle where she worked with scientists to create original stories about the lithosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere.

How do stories help people become aware of and care about environmental issues?  How does storytelling support people in daring to take action?

In this episode, I speak to Fran Stallings in Oklahoma.  I met Fran through the Earth Up! Festival that she co-organised through the National Storytelling Network in April of 2021.  Earth Up! brought together storytellers from around the world who are passionate about using their craft to help reconnect people to the rest of the natural world and to bring about change in relation to sustainability.  Fran has had twin interests in stories and biology since she was quite a young person.  She trained in biology and taught it at university, before leaving academia to become a full-time storyteller and trainer of storytelling.  She has had a long, illustrious and international career in storytelling.  Currently, she brings together her scientific background and her storytelling experience in writing the Earth Teller Tales column, which is available on her blog and through Oklahoma City University's Environmentor.  And she hosts the Artists Standing Strong Together online Climate Conversations.  Join me in finding out more about Fran's work; her aware, care, dare approach to telling; stealth eco-telling and EarthUp! 2022.

What does oral storytelling have to offer in relation to efforts to make a positive impact on our damaged ecosystems?

In this episode, I speak to storyteller, author, scholar and educator Anthony Nanson about his newly published book, Storytelling and Ecology: Empathy, Enchantment and Emergence in the Use of Oral Narratives. Anthony's passion for stories and nature informs all his creative work. He runs Awen Publications, a small press that publishes 'writing that is imaginative, boundary-pushing, eco-conscious, enchanting, and challenging of received wisdoms'. He was one of the editors of the important 2014 book Storytelling for a Greener World: Environment, Community and Story-based Learning. In our wide-ranging conversation, Anthony explains the importance of embodiment, the energy of performance and the role of enchantment in healing the rift between people and the rest of nature.

This week, I share my conversation with Botanica Fabula's Amanda Edmiston.   Amanda is an herbalist, folklorist and storyteller here in Scotland.  She has a particular passion for reconnecting people to plants, to the land, to traditional knowledge and to each other.  While she has a number of fabulous projects on the go the focus of our chat is on an intergenerational project she led called a Kist in Thyme.

In this episode I speak to Kevin Strauss, author of one of  my favourite books for environmental education Tales with Tails:  Storytelling the Wonders of the Natural World.  The book includes  stories that Kevin has written or re-told along with activities that can be used in formal or informal education, by teachers, parents, park  rangers and, well, storytellers.  I talk to Kevin, an environmental scientist, about what got him into storytelling.  He shares tips for using storytelling in teaching natural history both inside and outside of the classroom, how to create and adapt stories and where to find inspiration.  He shares an original story, The Stonemason's Daughter, which has a folktale-like format and theme.  It is not available anywhere else either in print or as a recording.

For this week's episode, I spoke to Catriona Blanke in Germany.  Catriona is a gifted singer-songwriter and storyteller with a passion for sharing Earth Stories with joy and connectedness.  Catriona has a background in theatre and organisational change.  She offers courses and trains people in theatre and storytelling for social transformation.  She has been an Earth Charter Ambassador for almost a decade and weaves this into the storytelling work she does.  In this episode, she talks to me about why stories matter, the renewed interest in storytelling in Germany, the Earth Charter and the Earth Stories Collection.

In this episode, I talk to award-winning Australian storyteller and workshop facilitator , Jenni Cargill-Strong.  We had a fascinating conversation covering a range of topics from enchantivism, to working with different types of stories for social change, telling stories in a country dealing with the legacies of colonialism, storytelling and place...and of course trees.  Trees seem to pop in to almost all of these podcast episodes. We love trees. Throughout our conversation, Jenni outlines stories that point audiences towards 'The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible' (the title of a book by Charles Eisenstein).

Jenni's Websites

In this episode, I caught up with Dawne McFarlane, Artistic Director of the 2021 Toronto Storytelling Festival.  Dawne discusses how festivals  provide leadership in promoting a global culture of respect and gratitude through the art of storytelling.  Festivals are one of the places where diverse people meet up and can find common ground.  Dawne shares how she approached organising a rich and diverse festival around the theme of 'Listening to the Voices of Nature' during a time of lockdown.  Listening, she argues, is a important as speaking in the art of storytelling.  Indigenous artists were at the heart of this festival and Dawne shares the role that traditional tales and elders can play in helping the world to transform to a more holistic worldview.

Dawne shares an Irish story, “The Daughter of the Fairy Queen,” from Told by the Peat Fire, stories by Sibylle Alexander, Hawthorn Press.

In this episode, I speak to permaculture educator Karen Noon. Karen originally hails from South Africa, but now lives on a small farm in Brittany, France.  Karen comes from a corporate background, but ten years ago that all changed.  Today I speak with Karen about the importance of personal storytelling in transformative education and how she sees permaculture as a way of re-storying ourselves, our gardens and our world.  She shares her 'river of life' story and the event in her life that led her to put people's voices at the heart of everything she does.  She outlines how to do the river of life as a personal exercise or with learners.

Join me for an inspiring chat with Judith Black, storyteller and climate activist, who has brought folktales into the belly of her State Legislature!  Judith has been telling stories for 35 years.  Five years ago, realising the full scale of the climate disaster we are facing, Judith dedicated herself and her storytelling skills to working on these issues.  In our chat, she shares three ways of working with story: (1) a wake up call to responsibility; (2) a warning and education; (3) modelling strategies for change.  She suggests a number of stories that fit these three categories and tells three: Spider and the Palm Nut Tree, Three Brahmans and a Tiger, The Giant Turnip.  Stories are powerful, she argues, because they keep our gates of perception open.

In this episode I talk to Svend-Erik Engh, a Danish storyteller, about plans to bring a Folkehøjskole ('folk high school') to Scotland. In our conversation, Svend-Erik shares the origins of Folkehøjskole in Denmark, the role of mythology in learning and the impact this form of education has on students and society.  There is some master storytelling here as well, as Svend-Erik shares with us the myth of Odin hanging from Yggdrasil, the sacred world tree.

While Svend-Erik and his team plan to offer an in-person, residential Folkehøjskole sometime in the future, they will be offering a 'taster' Folkehøjskole, with a focus on storytelling, online for three weeks beginning in July 2021.  This programme is open to anyone, anywhere.

In this episode, I share one of the first stories that I ever learned to tell: 'Truth and Story'.  This tale is one that I use often when working with researchers, scientists and students.  It is a version of the old Jewish tale by the same name.  However, this version is one that I learned from the Argentinian-Canadian storyteller Marta Singh.  Marta will be performing at this year's Beyond the Border Storytelling Festival in Wales (2-4 July 2021).

In this episode, I speak to Sian Cornelius, storyteller, author and harpist, about being in the Christchurch Earthquake of 2011 and how that experience led her to become passionate about the power of story to transform ourselves and our communities after trauma.  Her book, Transition Girl, shares the story of this part of Sian's life.  She has also published Gower Folk Tales, a collection of traditional stories from the Gower peninsula in Wales, where she lives off-grid in a lovely solar-powered wooden cabin in the woods.