Culture Fund: Storytelling Festival 2020

"The Covid-19 pandemic struck the UK in late 2019 and increased to the extent that the country was put into lockdown by late March 2020. The 2020 Orkney Storytelling Festival had already booked the storytellers Anne Hunter and Mio Shudo as our guests and hired venues. It was agreed that we would wait to see how things would develop with Covid, but by the late summer it looked like things would not open up soon and that if we were to have any sort of festival in 2020 then it would have to be an online production. Anne Hunter and Mio Shudo were very understanding and agreed to be our guests for the 2021 festival."

"It was decided that the 2020 online festival should be kept simple but that there was room for a mixture of professionally made and home made filmed events. The storytellers in the committee, Erin Farley, Fran Flett Hollinrake, Aine King, Marita Luck, Nela Scholma-Mason and Tom Muir, offered to record stories on various mediums, on camera, mobile phone and laptop. Festival stalwart Scott Gardiner provided songs, while music was supplied by Antonay Hodgson and Jennifer Wrigley. These recordings formed the opening and closing events, which also featured one story each from Anne Hunter and Mio Shudo, as a taste of the 2021 festival. These films were sent to local film maker and technical expert, Sean Lewis, to be put together as events. It was also decided to hire local professional film maker, Mark Jenkins, to create three films for the festival. His beautifully made films made him an obvious choice for something a bit more artistic. His finished product was of an extremely high quality, both technically and visually. What I can say is that our audience was way beyond anything that we could expect from an Orkney based live event."

"The feedback has been extremely positive with some people expressing their hope of coming to the festival another year,or visiting Orkney after seeing the films that showcased it so well. This festival has opened us up to a much wider audience. Our aim now is to build on that success and to continue promoting stories, and Orkney, to the wider world. The festival is currently still available to watch online."