It was 2020, and a homeless man and I were all alone. He looked at me with suspicion. Then he slowly moved into the belly of the subway car. I took out my portal tape recorder from my purse and spoke into its mic. To this day, I can still feel the relief flooding into my body as I told my story into it. I experienced relief from what my eyes were seeing. Relief from my body’s heightened sensory overload of danger. A healing relief obtained from entering into a story of my choosing.

In another time, in another world….

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…

Vale Pat Dargin

It was with great sadness that we received the news of our member Pat Dargin’s death. Pat died on 14th May 2021 after fighting dementia for a number of years.

Pat and her husband Peter were devoted members of our Guild. Peter was President and Pat was Treasurer during the early 2000’s. (2001-3) They also edited and published the national storytelling magazine Swag of Yarns……

One of the bright spots at the end of 2020 was my attendance at Christine Carlton’s online workshop ‘Hidden stories – Do you see what I see’.

The workshop I went to was attended by people from all over Australia and two people from Indonesia and Norway. In a year where storytelling was adversely affected due to Covid, this workshop reminded me of the joys of storytelling.

The workshop was…

What is storytelling? I thought the answer to this was simple; reading or telling stories. Throughout my internship with the NSW Storytelling Guild, I learn’t how complex and intricate the art of storytelling really is. It’s in no way simply reading fairytales, and although performances such as comedy or film could be considered storytelling in a sense, it is much more distinct as an art form in its own right.

Working with the Guild has been an eye-opening experience that has altered my perspective on the art of storytelling and what it means to share a story. This internship has allowed me to become a storyteller and perform to an audience for the first time. The experience made me feel confident and self-assured and allowed me to….