About
The Cambridge
Storytellers
Cambridge Storytellers meet most months of the
year, on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at 8 pm, in the CB2 Internet
Cafe at 5-7 Norfolk Street, in Cambridge UK.
Our brief is to give a
platform to storytellers in the local area, to encourage new talent,
to spread knowledge and understanding of storytelling and to provide
a storytelling service to the wider community.
Our sessions are divided into two 50 minute slots with an interval
for chatting and refreshments. Sometimes we have an invited guest
teller who will tell stories in the first or second half of the
evening; otherwise the floor is open to anyone who has a story to
tell. We welcome stories from any part of the oral tradition: folk
tales, wonder tales, reminiscences, jokes – as long as they are
under ten minutes long and paper-free.
Founded in 1998 by Peter
Hilken with a small group of friends, it has grown to a group of
over 50 core members, paying annual subscriptions, but we also
welcome larger audiences drawn from all over the Cambridge area.
As well as our regular meetings, we put on special events such as
workshops, rehearsed group tellings, and, for the first time in
2007, a storytelling festival. We are affiliated to the
national Society for Storytelling and have hosted events for them.
So what do we mean by storytelling and why do we do it? When
we tell stories, we don’t read from books: we don’t recite from
memory. We hear, or find stories from all over the world, and
retell them in as many different styles as there are people present.
Sometimes we change them completely, improvising new elements or
revising them to fit the modern world: sometimes we keep closely to
the traditional language of earlier versions. Sometimes our
stories come from our personal, family or community traditions:
sometimes we search for the oldest, the strangest, the most distant
stories we can find.
Some of us feel that we are reviving, or keeping alive, an ancient
tradition from a pre-literate past: some of us feel we are creating
a new artform for the new millennium, drawing on a contemporary oral
tradition that includes stand-up comedy and rap. But all of us
know that everyone tells stories all the time, at home, at work, at
school, in the supermarket check-out and on the phone. At
Cambridge Storytellers we believe strongly that everyone has a story
to tell. We aim to hear, and to enable people to tell their
stories.
You can find out more about what we are doing, here, on our website
or you may contact us by email:
cambridgestorytellers@gmail.com or phone: 01223 510756
Marion Leeper
July 2007