Culture Fund: Storytelling Festival

We were very pleased with the way the Festival went. We organised eight events over four days, and using unusual and atmospheric venues, including the Old School Quoyloo, St Peter’s Church Sandwick, the cathedral, and the always-popular Betty’s Reading Room. One of the events was a talk about the folklore of dragons, by Marita Lück, which was a sell out, and another was an hour of Tom Muir telling Orkney folk tales, which attracted a great audience of adults and children.

We are attracting more and more people to come to Orkney at least in part for the festival, including storytellers from other places. The audiences were receptive and the numbers were good. Our trip to Hoy was especially appreciated by our visitors; as always the ‘island jaunt’ is much appreciated by storytellers and island audiences alike.

For the first time ever, we also invited an artist to come to the festival, and Katherine Soutar drew pictures live as the stories were being told. The results, displayed on a screen so the audience could see the art being made, were wonderful. Katherine herself said that drawing a tale in the cathedral was one of the most incredible experiences of her life.

There were, however, a couple of major of challenges.

Firstly, one of our invited storytellers, Shonaleigh Cumbers, contracted COVID shortly before she was due to travel to Orkney. She had to pull out, and we were faced with finding another storyteller at very short notice. As it happened, Scottish storyteller Lindsay Gibb was in Orkney, here for a short holiday and to attend the Festival. She very kindly stepped in at the last minute, and gave wonderful performances alongside Peter Chand and the local tellers.

As usual, we started the Festival with a graveyard tour, ‘Absent Friends’. This year’s chosen graveyard was St Peter’s Eastside, in South Ronaldsay. Unfortunately the weather meant that the barriers were closed, so at very short notice the tour was redirected to St Magnus Cathedral graveyard. I conducted the St Peter’s tour a week later (after the Festival had finished, and managed an audience of about 35 people, almost all of them local. All proceeds went to the Festival.

Minor inconveniences included a very bad wind direction which prevented the fire at Betty’s Reading Room from being lit, making for a less cosy event than in previous years! Also, for our final event we couldn’t use Stromness Town Hall, and went instead to the Community Centre. It was fine but didn’t have the lovely atmosphere that we have come to expect for our final night.

Overall we were pleased with how it all went, and our reputation is spreading amongst the storytelling world.