Curious about storytelling and either want to get better at it, or simply not sure where to start? You don’t have to be a ‘natural’ or have an acting background – only an ability to talk and appreciate stories. Storytelling is a learnable art form with key practical tools and techniques that can help you to: expand, persuade, inspire, move, encourage, educate, entertain, and open the wonder door to bring your listeners – both adults and / or kids – into the nourishment and expansion of a shared imaginal world.

Using folk tales, teaching tales, wonder tales, and myth-telling, this weekend course, tucked in the gorgeous century old Uki Trinity Church with a labyrinth out the back - will teach you powerful and tangible skills and techniques for learning, crafting, and remembering stories, as well as how you can more effectively share stories through voice work, gesture, characterisation, scene-setting, and movement.

Especially suitable as professional development for: teachers, business leaders, workshop facilitators, community workers, therapists, health professionals, presenters, parents, grandparents, librarians, and lovers of the mythopoetic – this course will suit anyone with a love of story, fun, creative exchange, and the play of imagination.

Although we will be working with imaginative stories over the workshop, many of the techniques you'll learn can be equally applied to biographical and real-life stories.

THE COURSE RUNS FROM SATURDAY 9.30-5PM & SUNDAY 11AM-4.30PM, WITH AN ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCE EVENING A FORTNIGHT LATER ON FRIDAY 29TH OF AUGUST 6-9PM. While you won't be obligated to tell, this evening is intended to enable you to learn a story, experience telling to a supportive / appreciative public, and launch you into hopefully the first of many tellings! Tickets to the performance will be sold separately at $15 or $12 conc. with revenue raised being directly donated to the Uki Refugee Project (a local friendship and outreach group welcoming and sharing experiences and stories with recent refugees to Australia.)

Note: For teachers, this course amounts to 15 hours of non NESA accredited elective professional development.

PLEASE BRING: lunch, morning and afternoon tea snacks, water bottle etc. (herbal teas provided), comfy clothes and layers for warmth, cushion / sheepskin (there will be options to use chairs or sit on cushions), notebook and pencils / pen.

ABOUT YOUR FACILITATOR

Melaina Faranda has told stories (biographical and imaginative) to audiences for decades. A qualified English teacher and the author of over seventy children's and YA books published nationally and internationally, she has facilitated countless masterclasses, retreats, presentations, and workshops for schools, libraries, festivals, organisations etc. to rave feedback.

Melaina especially values the real-life circuitry of oral storytelling as a form of deep collective homecoming. With a particular interest in myth-telling, she performs in Australia and internationally. She has attended England’s premier storytelling course – the three-month Emerson College residential: Storytelling Beyond Words, along with additional in-person training and courses with: Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Martin Shaw, Sharon Blackie, Ashley Ramsden, Shonaleigh Cumbers, Hugh Lupton, David Whyte, Angharad Wynne, Colin Campbell, and many other storytelling luminaries in the UK and USA.