Into the new year with The Village Storytelling Centre
This is a huge hello from The Village Storytelling Centre in Glasgow as we see 2024 stretched before us like a wonderful canvas filled with colour and opportunity. For those unfamiliar with our work at The Village, we are Scotland’s leading applied storytelling organisation who dream of a world where people and communities are inspired, connected and heard. Through our work of embedding the power of story in communities we use storytelling as a tool to make person centred, collaborative, participant led projects and programmes that explore a huge variety of human experience. We are fast approaching our 25 year anniversary and in that time we have worked in all the following contexts; mental health, homelessness, drug and alcohol recovery, kinship care, dementia consultation, prisons, hospitals, complex and additional support needs to name but a few. We are recognised nationally and internationally for our work in communities and we’re hugely excited about our next steps.
However, what does all this mean for the new year? Well, not only will we be continuing our community centred work in Pollok with our early years, children and young people’s programme, we also have a huge list of interesting projects in the pipeline exploring a variety of different perspectives on human experience. Perspectives from the LGBTQ+ community, from complex learning needs contexts, from new Scots and other underrepresented voices across Glasgow and beyond.
Many of these perspectives will be presented during our biennial festival, The Village Storytelling Festival. Please put the 25th – 30th June in your diary for this year’s Village Storytelling Festival at the CCA in Glasgow. There are many details to still work out but it promises to be a hugely exciting platform for many new and established performers across the UK and Europe. We will be offering two new commissions in the coming weeks so please keep your eyes peeled for performance opportunities. And, if that wasn’t enough, during the festival we will be hosting the Federation of European Storytelling (FEST) conference this year. Working in collaboration with 3 other organisations across the UK we will be hosting a whole range of storytellers and storytelling promoters for a three day extravaganza during that week in June.
This year will also see us launch the second iteration of our Emerging Storytellers programme. A 16 week paid placement here at the Village that supports new voices to build to a public performance during our festival but also participate and shadow our projects, developing skills in community facilitation and understanding the huge variety of contexts where storytelling can thrive. Last year’s pilot programme demonstrated the huge thirst for storytelling across Glasgow and beyond, we can’t wait to welcome new faces into the organisation.
We are always looking to connect with people across the country, offering opportunities for everyone to engage with storytelling at any level. We are particularly keen to meet people who wish to explore the application of storytelling and its purposeful use for personal, community or organisational development. If you’re keen to connect then feel free to get in touch with us here – dan@villagestorytelling.org.uk. We’ll regularly be updating everyone through the newsletter so watch this space for more updates and information. In the meantime, enjoy your start to 2024 from Dan Serridge,Storyteller and Artform Development Lead, The Village Storytelling Centre.
