Sites and resources from around the world

Of the many sites related to storytelling, here are just a few to start your explorations:

• Storytell listserv is an international forum of amazingly generous storytellers – an incredible fount of knowledge.
• How to begin and end a traditional tale – not only “Once upon a time” and “They lived happily ever after”.
• Yashpeh is a highly ambitious project to collect a million folktales of the world in one easily searchable database. Folklorist Yoel Perez, Director of the Center of Folktales and Folklore, has begun the work and welcomes co-operation to extend it.
• A 30-minute interview with master storytellers, Tim Jennings and Leanne Ponder, offering great insight into our art. The interview is preceded by their telling of Four Friends and a Tiger.
• Folklore and Mythology – Electronic Texts, an incredible number of traditional tales and lore from around the world. A site maintained by D.L. Ashliman of Pittsburgh University, U.S.A.
• Folklore and Mythology Resource Guide, self-explanatory, and a useful collection.
• Many collections of traditional folk tales are now in the public domain: Joseph Jacob’s English Fairy Tales is just one example.
• Oral Tradition, an academic journal of over two decades standing, is now available online. The site contains nearly 500 articles and 10,000 pages, with all of the contents downloadable as pdf files. The entire electronic archive is also searchable by keyword or author name, with phrase-based and Boolean searches possible as well.
• European Storytelling Places, details of storytelling organisations in 20 European countries, collected by Aeda, the Spanish Profesional Storyteller’s Association in collaboration with FEST.
• Fairy tales and the healing journey analyses many of the darker motifs in fairy tales.
  This page on the same website has a list of more thought-provoking articles.
• International Storytelling Network (Red Internacional de Cuentacuentos) brings together storytellers from 50 countries.
• Facts & Fiction, a UK storytelling magazine edited by Pete Castle, has stories, articles and many links to what is happening in Britain.
• Federation of Asian Storytellers (FEAST) has done much to strengthen and spread the art, not only in Singapore but throughout the region.
• Storybug is Karen Chace’s extensive website. Karen is a long-time friend from Storytell and super-proficient web researcher. This shows in the many links on her site. It was a great delight to be able to meet up in person on both my first and second trip to the USA.
• Story Arts Online – Heather Forest’s large website.
• The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling – a collection of links from FreeBookNotes.

Storytelling in Germany

• VEE (Verband der Erzählerinnen und Erzähler) is the organisation of German-speaking storytellers
• www.erzaehlen.de is a site networking much of the storytelling in Germany and German-speaking countries
  It is maintained by Martin Ellrodt (Geschichten aller Art), a storyteller based in Nuremberg
• Michl Zirk is another Nuremberg storyteller
  Michl also organises the wonderful bi-annual storytelling festival ZauberWort
• Dirk Nowakowski is a storyteller living near Heidelberg. His website has useful links to the German storytelling scene
• Die Märchenerzählerin is the website of Alexandra Kampmeier, an exciting young teller from Hamburg with programmes for adults as well as children
• Theater Maskara is Frieder Kahlert’s exciting theatre dedicated to the art of storytelling with masks
• Peter Wucherpfennig is another Darmstadt storyteller. Peter provides truly magical accompaniment to his tales with the Celtic harp
• Storytelling may be a wonderful profession, but it is also a business. And when professional business advice is needed, Stefan Kuntz offers this at Künstlerberatung

A few academic articles

Storytelling as part of our evolution

• Recent fascinating research by Dr Jamie Tehrani into the origins of folk tales estimates that the story The Smith and the Devil dates back 6000 years to the Bronze Age. Here is an article from The Atlantic about the research
  And here is the full research paper: Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales
  • Following the media interest in that research, Pete Castle added an interesting blog page on the persistence of such elements in folk culture
• This 1994 article by George Monbiot examines the role of the blacksmith in wider mythology: The Smith and the Devil
• An article about phylogentic research, focusing on several other tales including the Cosmic Hunt: Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins
• An article considering the role of storytelling in early societies: Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling
• Storytelling in Education: an extensive compilation of research into the effects of storytelling in education