Have you heard about Friends on the Shelf? This beautifully designed independent magazine features real life stories from known and unknown writers. At the beginning of the latest issue, you have Harry Enfield writing about adopting a duckling; later on, you have me describing my brief foray into the world of naturism. Some stories are […]
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In any wisely organised universe, a writing project for a whisky brand would involve much tramping through heather, gazing up at Scottish hillsides, admiring trickling burns, walking over ancient cobblestones, pushing through creaking warehouse doors, tiptoeing past sleeping casks and, you would hope, tasting a dram or two. Last spring, lockdown put paid to the […]
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What helps you be creative? Speakers shared their ideas last week at The Story 2019, a one-day festival of storytelling held in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. Here are five of the best. 1. Investigate random objects Creator and performer Alison S M Kobayashi loves to investigate random things, like the tapes left in […]
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Creative fuel from The Story I came away from The Story 2017 with my head full of stories – about hay fights on Southwark Bridge, a pickled pig foetus in a jar, robots that draw faces, banana phones and survivalist bunkers in Texas. This annual festival of stories and storytelling is always a joy, providing […]
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When I was a child, I was unaware of what a master storyteller Ronnie Corbett was. I just saw a small man dwarfed by a huge chair, who seemed overly fond of golfing jumpers and shaggy dog tales. But when I was researching an article on hypnotic presentations for The Guardian, I started to see […]
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The Story, a one day conference about stories and storytelling, is something special. I’ve been going for the last few years and now I don’t even check out who’s going to be speaking. I just book. It’s always a day that fizzes and crackles with inspiring people telling extraordinary stories. This year was no exception. […]
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Every year, Matt Locke and his crew bring together extraordinary speakers for The Story, an exploration of storytelling at Conway Hall in Holborn. The ideas fizzle and crackle all day, colliding and coalescing, firing up synapses and sparking a host of connections, leaving the audience buzzing. This year’s edition, on 20 February 2015, was my […]
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Charlotte Barker tells me how her research led to the discovery of a hidden Georgian chocolate kitchen at Hampton Court Palace. A few weeks ago, I went to a storytelling workshop at the Tower of London. At the end of the day, we all had to tell a story relating to our work. Charlotte Barker, […]
Read more...You never know quite what will happen at The Story, except that it will illuminate distant areas of your brain with unpredictable copper sparks for some time to come. Here are a few of the things I learned from this year’s gathering of storytellers of all stripes – from film makers, writers and artists to […]
Read more...Since Procter & Gamble hired Jim Bangel 40 years ago and made him their official ‘Storyteller’, the profession of ‘corporate storyteller’ has become increasingly mainstream. Storytellers now pop up all over the place, not just in their natural habitat – marketing and advertising – but in oil and gas companies, the automotive sector and software […]
Read more...Believe in clouds. Be stubborn. Keep your rococo aesthetic. Lob your opinions upwards. Rise up like an octopus, like a rubber parachute, like a chewy umbrella. Don’t believe the hype. Investigate peace. Be joyously, defiantly subjective. Send your characters to remedial school. Talk to the person next to you. Walk into a story. Listen to […]
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What can creatives learn from the way that Jacques Tati uses sound in his 1958 film, Mon Oncle? As someone who works with words, sometimes it’s great to come across storytelling that does away with them altogether. This article, written for a 26 / D&AD project, The Story Works, reveals how sound tells a story in Mon […]
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