The month of February witnessed a lot of action in the arena of storytellers. Various meet-ups, workshops and storytelling festivals around the country offered enriching moments to the storytellers, participants and audience alike.
The two prominent storytelling festivals that concluded last month, Chennai Storytelling Festival and the Children’s Literature Festival in Gurgaon garnered huge popularity and appreciation amongst story lovers across all age groups. Heads & Tales hosted an interactive storytelling event for families on February 26th at Rangasthala Auditorium as part of celebrating the International Mother Language Day. The Bangalore Storytelling Society celebrated the month of love through their meetup themed ‘Romance in Folklore & Mythology‘.
Heads and Tales by Bangalore Storytelling Society (BSS)
BSS has always been instrumental in keeping the essence of storytelling alive through unique initiatives during their events. Their latest storytelling event on 26th February 2017 held at Rangasthala Auditorium, M.G Road, focused on the interactive storytelling sessions for families along with celebrating the International Mother Language Day. The workshop was instrumental in upholding the cultural diversity of our country and the vast blend of ideas and thoughts through many languages.
The session, initiated by Soumya Srinivasan, Founder member of BSS along with Shylaja Sampath paved way for sharing of stories in native languages. This unique mix of dialects was a great learning experience for the participants, making the event a memorable one. Watch out for the March meetup of BSS on 12th March, 2017 that will tell the Stories of Spices.
Delhi Storytellers’ Network – February Meetup
The Delhi Storytellers’ Network hosted its monthly meetup for February at the Oxford Bookstore on 26th February. The theme was ‘Love Stories‘ and participants poured out love stories of every kind. From satire to comedy to anecdotes to poetry to biographical narratives to life-stories, the spectrum of stories was immense. Every story carried a unique message.
Children’s Literature Festival in Gurgaon
Gurgaon hosted hundreds of children at the Gurgaon Children’s Lit-Fest held on 5th February 2017, a joint effort by Vega Schools and ILoveRead.in Delhi, a popular online library. The theme was rich and colourful, a potpourri of stories accompanied by music, play and visual multimedia. The show also hosted a display of a vast array of books from some of the most popular publishers of children’s books such as Duckbill, Puffin and Tulika.
The event was multi-dimensional in terms of providing exposure to various facets of the art of storytelling through music, craft and art, and figured popular storytellers and authors including Benita Sen, Kamal Pruthi, Shalini Arora, Chitra Chandrashekar, Seema Wahi and Pawan Waghmare. A creative writing workshop by our Founder, Arunima Shekhar provided the kids with a powerful and creative platform to bring out their stories from within. There were activities even for parents who had accompanied their kids and a panel discussion held at the end provided a lot of insight about the future of storytelling and its importance in the fast-paced lifestyle. The Lit-Fest gained a positive response from the participants and parents alike, echoing the significance of such events in the days to come.
Chennai Storytelling Festival
The myriad possibilities of storytelling were explored by people from various domains and across different age groups in this event that was held from 3rd February to 12th February 2017.
The sessions in the first seven days spread across various places in Chennai, especially in the educational institutes, NGOs and business centers. The events included storytelling classes and performances for kids, and workshops for teenagers and adults through various mediums such as usage of props, body language, music, visuals and voice modulations. Core areas such as learning languages and subjects, creative writing, soft skills learning and business communications were explored in the week-long activities.
The events of the last three days were hosted by Dr. MGR-Janaki College, R.A Puram. Specialized workshops were conducted for students and professionals on different days exploring the basics of storytelling and its applications in personal and professional lives.
The highlight of the event was the global video-conference webcast discussion about ‘Storytelling in the World Today’ presented in association with the Chennai Storytellers and various other organizations and individuals reflected on the storytelling therapy and value learning through stories by Eric Miller from the World Storytelling Institute.
To participate in these events, reach out to Storytellers in Your City here.
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We release a digest of significant storytelling events that happened across the country every month. If you have news about storytelling events in your city, write to us at editor@tell-a-tale.com.
