This small 2D display, together with The Flying Donkeys Screen and cartoons served as an overview for visitors to the question “Who Tells Stories?”
Posters
from Crick Crack Club, the Traditional Arts Team and storyteller Helen East
The posters depict events from the modern UK ‘storytelling revival’, which began in the 1980s.
Poster and events listing from the first major UK festival held at Battersea Arts Centre in 1985. Many of those appearing went on to become major figures in the international storytelling scene.
Poster celebrating ten years of ‘the Young Storyteller of the Year’ competition. This competition, held annually from 2004 – 2018, launched the careers of several of today’s professional storytellers.
Poster and events listing from ‘Breaking the Silence’ a story collection project that took place in Shropshire in 1994. The original cassette tapes were digitized and are now held at The Centre For Folklore, Myth & Magic, Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
The posters are now in the Society for Storytelling Archive.
Photographs
by John Street, Sandstone Trail Ranger
This photographic montage shows Katy Cawkwell telling Rhiannon in the Queen’s Parlour Cave, off the Sandstone Trail in Cheshire in September 2004 as part of a Mythstories / Bolesworth Estate collaboration for Step Into Cheshire funded by European Leader+. This performance space, used later in a series of “Storytelling Goes Underground” Arts Council England funded events, proved to be an otherworldly experience for tellers and audiences who were never quite sure how much time had elapsed while in the cave.
These photographs are now kept in the Mythstories Archive.
Mary Webb’s Books Cross stitch embroidery
by Evelyn Ives
The cross-stitch work celebrates Shropshire author Mary Webb, 1881- 1927, whose work was inspired by the local folktales she heard as a girl from her Schoolmaster Father.
The embroidery is now held by The Mary Webb Society.
Shropshire folktales continue to be an inspiration to writers to this day. Between 2003 – 2006 Mythstories received Arts Council England funding to commission three poets to respond to local stories. Michael Rosen reworked ‘The Ballad of Fouke le fitz waryn’ in quatrains, Fred D’Aguiar produced 17 Ellesmere Poems based on Ellesmere stories and folklore and Catherine Fisher, working with storyteller Daniel Morden, responded to Richard Gough’s ‘The History of Myddle’ (written 1701).
