The power of storytelling to do business

Storytelling has the power to tell us about who we are, show us what we value and communicate complexity in simple and elegant ways. The opportunity for businesses to use storytelling to communicate their own services better, and to be more in tune with their clients is huge.

Storytelling Festival

The Storytelling Festival is on in Amsterdam this weekend and I am going to eat it up like an angry hoover in gravy. Or maybe a gentle swallow in dew. Depends on the stories I suppose. In any case they’re mostly happening at the NDSM.

Here’s my picks:

Friday

19.30 Discover the World of Storytelling

20.45 Theresa Amoon - Through the Golden Door

Saturday

20.00 Ben Hagerty - Gilgamesh

Sunday

15.30 Cat Weatherall- The Siren Wife and The Foppish King

If you’re coming let me know below!

The art of telling stories

Photograph of Mezrab taken by Morten Arstad - arstad.nl

 

The people own the story. That was Friday’s lesson. As a teller you are a channel to allow an idea or movement rest in a number of eyes, ears and laps.

The story went brilliantly well. You can’t ask for more than a hundred or so listening pairs of ears when sharing something precious. Storytelling is such an alive art form. It allows for space and reflection and intimacy in a way that a cinema, visual art (ok, sometimes), or even theatre cannot. And it’s hardly prepared. It is just you, the teller, and the listeners moving the same way for 2-15 minutes.

Sea shanties

I will be telling the Sailor and the Flower at the Mezrab’s storytelling tonight. It really is a gem of an evening and will be fascinating to see how it turns out live.

The Sailor and the Flower

 

 

 

This story was originally written in January and posted but then a good friend painted this beautiful painting to go along with it. So here it is again, meaning fortified and intact.

 

 

 

There was a man. There used not always to be men, but this was at a time when it could be said that there was a man.

A sailor who, when his ship came to shore, left the town, the crowds, the market place. The hoardes of salesmen and grey windows where behind spinsters thrived sewing and curing ham, sending sons off to war and daughters to be whores {click below to continue}

Clickety-click Diary #66 – Storytelling

Waking up this morning, I found out it was the afternoon. Leaping out of bed with all the joy of a weekend in front of me, I quickly ran into the hazy wall of an unexpected hangover.

It was there lurking while I was in bed, chasing away the morning with turns and eye-cheating -lids – a blissful Saturday morning with nothing much to do.

This is a change- dear reader. I have spent Saturday mornings cowering in terror at the abyss of empty opportunity in front of me, but not this. I was doing nothing, and happy. I believe this is my favoured state.