Join Us for an Inspiring Morning with Ilene Evans!

The African Australian Advocacy Centre warmly invites you to a special storytelling session with Ilene Evans, an internationally acclaimed African American storyteller, performer and cultural educator.

Through powerful stories, music and historical portrayals, Ilene brings to life the experiences, resilience and contributions of African Americans, particularly remarkable women whose stories deserve recognition.

📅 Friday, 16 October 2026

🕥 11:00 AM

📍 Westmead, Sydney

Free event | Registration required

Come and be inspired!

Ilene Evans - Storyteller

Storytelling has been a great adventure for me. I started storytelling while I was still performing as a professional dancer in Chicago, Illinois. I loved stories, all kinds of stories. Stories of the great Ballets, both classic and modern, had stimulated my curiosity and my imagination.

The oral traditions of storytelling continue today in living artforms. Storytelling is the art of using language, vocalization, and physical movement and gesture to engage the listener's imagination. It invites the listener to follow the mind of the teller into understanding people, places, events, and journeys across time, space, and meaning. A good story creates moving pictures in the listener’s mind, opens their hearts, and builds understanding. It connects individuals through shared experience, preserving culture and passing wisdom from one generation to the next.

In all my stories I incorporate music, rhythm and rhyme, traditional tales, and folklore because those things are part of the cultural context of our historical journey of freedom. I enjoy telling tales from all over the world, but especially tales from the African diaspora, folklore, legend, history, fables, fairytales, and myths. We are a storytelling people, a people from an oral tradition, passing on knowledge, warnings and wisdom.

I am an active member of the National Association of Black Storytellers and with them, I travelled to Ghana in 2015 for Panafest Festival presentations. Bringing the story of Harriet Tubman to Cape Coast Castle on the Atlantic Ocean, the place where so many went through the Door of No Return, where people were held in the stifling dungeons below, made the horrific aspects of capture and bondage very real. That unmitigated brutality was a life changing and deepening experience. I love my people and telling their stories is a great honour and continues to give my life purpose.

I was invited to share music and song with women in Marwa, Tanzania in 2018, just after my mother passed away. The journey was arranged by a dear colleague who felt my unique approach to teaching and performing would be just right for what was needed to bring their work in the village from their remote rural setting to the world. Again, I found such a kinship and bond with the women who spoke little to no English but understood music and its power. This was life changing too.

“Storytelling preserves the voices that shaped us, and those we risk losing. It invites empathy, sparks imagination, and carries the wisdom of generations across time and place.”

For more information about Ilene and her work please visit:

https://www.voicesfromtheearth.org/

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