International partnerships

Our network extends all over the world, with our storytellers attending festivals and taking part in projects in places as far flung as Singapore, Norway, Australia and India. We take a proactive role in creating and nurturing partnerships across the global storytelling network and are honoured to be able to welcome some of the finest international storytellers to our Centre in Edinburgh.

Our annual Scottish International Storytelling Festival focuses on a different international theme each year, and provides valuable opportunities for storytellers from different
cultures and backgrounds to come together and share stories, ideas and approaches.

Following on from a rich and vibrant 'Out of Eden: Scotland and Africa' theme in 2007, and an inspiring 'Northlands and Sagalands' in 2008, this year the Festival programme looked at the authentic voices at the hearth of Scotland with 'Homelands', featuring tradition bearers from the indigenous cultures of North America, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean.

International projects

  • Following planning meetings at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and the path finder Gathering in Oslo in August 2008, the Federation for European Storytelling was formally established at the second Gathering in Lausanne in August 2009. Donald Smith attended, representing the Scottish Storytelling Forum and Centre. Read more.
  • In the summer of 2008, Claire Hewitt was funded by the Scottish Arts Council to travel to the Arctic Circle, where she visited Tromsø and took part in the Riddu Riddu festival, celebrating the arts of indigenous peoples of the world - Navajo hoop dancers; Nenet singers; Sami joikers, Mongolian throat singers and Taiwanese musicians.
  • Storytellers David Campbell and Mio Shapley were invited to Sendai and Kyoto in Japan to take part in the Japanese Storytellers' Association's 30th anniversary celebrations. Here they performed at the Kyoto International Community House to a rapturous audience, and the Japan-Scotland storytelling partnership has continued to bloom ever since.
  • Orkney based Marita Luck visited the Sturgeon Lake Eaglenest Pow-wow as part of a tour that took in Singapore, Australia and Canada. Marita was invited to be guest of honour at the Australian Philosophy, Science and Theology Festival in Grafton, New South Wales and at the reserve of the Canada Cree First Nations at the Lake in Saskatchewan.
  • Claire and Fergus McNicol were invited to visit a Waldorf school in Uppsala, Sweden. Here they worked with local pupils and teachers who were immensely responsive to traditional stories and enjoyed listening to their accents, making story sticks, and developing movement games and participative stories for younger children.
  • The youth association of the Ecuadoran Cofan nation, one of the oldest intact cultures in the Americas, met some of Scotland's storytellers when they called in at the Edinburgh Refugee Centre. This was a meeting rich in cultural exchange, all enabled through the medium of stories.
  • Destination Viking Sagalands was an international project involving six countries, and brought together Scots storytellers with partners to encourage the transfer of knowledge around the saga tradition to new generations through storytelling. The focus here was on maintaining the landscapes in which important saga and story-events took place, and making this a viable base for future tourism development.

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