Telling and listening to stories feels as nurturing as a bowl of winter soup.

Reflection on Community Storytelling by Leanne Logan

Why do I go to the Wednesday monthly story swaps? .. because I want to learn to tell stories well, and I want to listen to the tales of others. Having spent a third of my life travelling the world – and now being unable to leave our own backyard due to Covid – listening to a story from far away can feel almost as good as being there. Almost. In other ways it is just as good, if not better, as stories take us to places we would never be able to visit anyway – back in history, into the future, to countries with iron walls and into the locked hearts of people who long threw away the key. 

Through story we can make meaning of our own messy, muddled lives. At times that feels as nurturing as a bowl of winter soup.

I came to the story swaps facilitated by Christine Carlton a year ago while looking for ways to engage and extend my own storytelling world. With the tap of a few keyboard buttons, I was hearing childhood tales from Zambia, listening to the plight of a crab destined to become a Singaporean culinary speciality, and learning that snails, working collaboratively, can escape the dinner pot in wartime Austria. It was as if I was experiencing the world anew, and I’ve been hooked ever since. 

Oral storytelling is an essential part of being human. We have always told stories, and we can all tell stories. To hear a story being told – knowing that it will never be told exactly the same way ever again and that you are participating in something that’s linked us all for millennia – can be life-changing.

Since becoming a member of Australian Storytellers a year ago, and participating in the various story swaps and meets that the group offers, I find myself changed. I watch live storytelling events being screened from Singapore as a hot date on a Friday night with my wife. I wake up at 3am to catch tales from the Yorkshire Festival of Story. One morning at 6am, I was participating in a masterclass through Storyversity, and recently, I devoted a Saturday to Christine’s excellent workshop - “Tall stories in a Small Box”. I’ve almost had six decades on this amazing planet we call Earth, and thanks to the collaborative world of story, I’m feeling younger than ever.

Einstein is quoted as saying: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

Thanks to storytelling and our imaginations, that beauty is at our fingertips.