Once upon a time THE RISE OF STORYTELLING

South Africa has a rich history of storytelling. And while we don’t routinely sit around a campfire telling tales under the stars any longer (wait, does a braai count?), we all still have stories to share. Think online dating horror stories, reminiscing about a loved one who has passed away, the I-shouldn’t-be-alive adventure stories or just a good old gossip session. ‘Stories are much more powerful than you think,’ says former presenter Ruda Landman. ‘Facts don’t convince people,’ she says. ‘Stories do.’ We might understand things with our minds, but it’s our hearts that ultimately move us to empathy and action. ‘If you look into any culture, you’ll find storytelling and oral traditions. It’s a part of the way we engage with one another, it’s the way we teach, it’s the way we engage with the world around us,’ says Irshad Kathrada. (An economic advisor by day, he frequently tells stories at public events.) The ability to capture and keep an audience’s attention has become something of a lost art – mostly we’re just waiting to get a word in ourselves. ‘When you go to a party and someone is telling a story, they inevitably get sidetracked or interrupted because we often don’t give each other space to speak,’ says Irshad. The need, however, is clearly annual festival with a three-day event. Across the pond, Scotland’s International Storytelling Festival kicked off in 1989 to breathe life back into the deep-rooted Scottish tradition of telling tales. But the largest storytelling festival in Europe is the Alden Biesen International Storytelling Festival hosted in Belgium: it’s multilingual, with stories told in up to eight different languages. Similar festivals have also started in the Netherlands, Ireland, England and Wales. The project that really put artful storytelling on the map, however, was The Moth. These gatherings have been going for 20-odd years, since it launched in 1997 in Georgia, USA. The rules are simple and frequently replicated at other storytelling events: a live audience, a true story, no notes. They’ve provided a platform for more than 25000 stories, and The Moth project hosts events all over the US. Just to be clear: storytelling events are not the same as Toastmasters. It’s not about self-improvement, and you aren’t being graded. It’s not TedX either; you aren’t sharing ideas. Or doing stand-up. Instead, these storytelling projects want you to share stories about yourself: your life, your experiences, your culture, your family, your travels – the good, the bad and the funny of it all. All you need is a story, a live audience and a whole lot of courage.