Past Storytelling Events

First Friday Fling – Theme: Being Human

Friday, 06 October 2023
St Peter’s Heritage Centre, Peterculter
7:00–9:00pm

On the first Friday of the month, Grampian Association of Storytellers (GAS) meet to share stories and poems in a fun, friendly, and welcoming space. Participants will find this a safe space to try out storytelling or just to listen to stories, all with a nice cup of tea or coffee and a wee biscuit at half time.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

The Voice Shall Always Remain

Wednesday, 18 October 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 2, Seminar Room 224
6:30–8:00pm

Iranian storyteller Zahra Afsah and Syrian storyteller Khloud Ereksousi use the traditional technique of pardeh-khani (narration through curtains) to interweave an ancient Persian tale with modern day stories, exploring how the key to freedom for many Iranian women lies in their own voices and talents.

Bennachie Speaks

Friday, 20 October 2023
Aberdeen Arts Centre, 33 King Street, Aberdeen
7:30–8:30pm

Musician Mairi McKeown and storyteller Ailsa Dixon weave legend and history with freshly composed music to explore the past, present, and future of Bennachie: from rock formations, 900-year-old love triangles, and the impact of climate change on its slopes. Through song and story, the mountain speaks.

The Promise

Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 7, Meeting Room 1
6:30–8:00pm

Inspired by interviews conducted with refugees, ‘The Promise’, presented by storyteller Anna Conomos and musician Rebecca Vučetić, centres on two best friends, one Greek, one Turkish, and the promise that unites them forever. This powerful performance is based around Greek tales, songs, and music from Asia Minor.

The Three Apprentices

Friday, 27 October 2023
St Peter’s Heritage Centre, Peterculter
7:00–9:00pm

Join Phyll McBain, David Pullar, and Cara Roberts as they share story magic with you. All three are Apprentice Storytellers with the Scottish Storytelling Centre, and all are bringing new voice to the North-East from the North-East.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

Stories from the Gelly

Monday, 30 October 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 7, Meeting Room 1
6:30–8:00pm

Storytelling and animated film come together to bring the tales of Scotland’s Travelling People to life. The Two Ravens, produced by Christine Martin and animator John McGeoch, is a story of black magic, love, and the deep belief in goodness personified by the folk hero Jack, adapted from the telling of Duncan Williamson (1928–2007). Linda Williamson will complement the film telling stories from Duncan’s legacy and from their years under canvas with their two children, living in the traditional gelly camp.

First Friday Fling – Theme: Being Human and Beyond

Friday, 3 November 2023
St Peter’s Heritage Centre, Peterculter
7:00–9:00pm

On the first Friday of the month, Grampian Association of Storytellers (GAS) meet to share stories and poems in a fun, friendly, and welcoming space. Participants will find this a safe space to try out storytelling or just to listen to stories, all with a nice cup of tea or coffee and a wee biscuit at half time.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

Naija-Tales: Tell it Like a Nigerian

Tuesday, 7 November 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 7, Meeting Room 1
6:30–8:00pm

How did dogs come to live with humans and how many skyscrapers can one count on the Lagos skyline? The Nigerian saying, ‘Naija no dey carry last’ (Nigerians never finish last), is at the heart of Lola Dabiri’s storytelling. This evening of tales will begin by going all the way back to the traditional tales of Lola’s ancestors before moving on to stories that reflect the beating hearts of Nigerians around the world today.

Ballads and Stories

Friday, 17 November 2023
St Peter’s Heritage Centre, Peterculter
7:00–9:00pm

In partnership with Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland (TMSA), GAS is delighted to be hosting an evening of stories and ballads. Join us around the fireplace, so to speak, and share in an evening of entertainment without radio, television, and social media.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

A User’s Guide to Stories and Heritage

Saturday, 18 November 2023
St Peter’s Heritage Centre, Peterculter
2:00–4:30pm

Led by Nicola Wright, this workshop is a wonderful opportunity to dip your toes into creating stories around a heritage theme. If you’re a storyteller interested in heritage or you work or volunteer locally, this is a great opportunity to have a go.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

Toilet Tales

Sunday, 19 November 2023
Dunbar Hall, Dunbar Street, Aberdeen AB24 3UJ
7:00–9:00pm

Join storytellers Jackie Ross and Nicola Wright in celebrating World Toilet Day with GAS, all to raise money for the charity Toilet Twinning, which helps thousands of people across the world get access to clean water and sanitation. This is an evening of stories, quizzes, and fascinating historical facts about the necessary thing we all need to do – go to the loo.

Contact: gas_story@hotmail.com

Threads of Gold: Ancient Bulgarian Tales of Magic and Mystery

Tuesday, 21 November 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 2, Seminar Room 224
6:30–8:00pm

Born by the Black Sea and the Old Mountain, Nana Tomova is a Traditional Oral Storyteller who carries in her bones old Bulgarian stories: …A maid made gold by the river of magic for her gifts to the serpents and the snakes of the dark. A river of red birthed by the blade which sought the apple of gold. Whilst the dragoness wept for the earth and the rivers. Their blood shed to make a hero, their tears wept to soothe the earth…

Tales from the North-East and Beyond

Tuesday 28 November 2023
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Floor 2, Seminar Room 224
6:30–8:00pm

Talented and hilarious storyteller Phyll McBain will lead this exuberant evening of storytelling. Her Doric tales will explore anecdotes from her own life and the story of how she became a storyteller. Phyll will then invite up-and-coming tellers from around the North-East, who will share tales of real life and traditional tales with a modern twist.

Coastal Tales of the North-East

Storyteller Ailsa Dixon in Portsoy: Credit: Ailsa Dixon

Storyteller Ailsa Dixon, a Cruden Bay native, weaves fantastical, local, coastal tales of mystery and magic with real historical adventures. Join us for an evening of witches, waves, mermaids, journeys, and salt sea spray. Free but ticketed.

Stories at the Grampian Association of Storytellers Friday Fling

Friday, 04 November 2022
King's College Chapel (Hybrid Event)
7:00-9.00pm

Join local storytellers Sheena Blackhall, David Brown, Pauline Cordiner, Diana Peers, and Jackie Ross for an evening of local tales and discussion. Dana Scott will chair an interview with the tellers, asking how they became storytellers and what storytelling means to them. This friendly storytelling event welcomes contributions from those who would love to share a story.

Tales Through Signs: BSL Storytelling

  
Dr Ella Leith and storyteller/poet Tania Allan. Credit: Ella Leith and Jessica Docherty

Tuesday, 25 October 2022
Sir Duncan Rice Library, Second Floor, Seminar Room 224
7:00-8:30pm

Join us for a special evening during which Ella Leith introduces the relationship between British Sign Language (BSL) and stories, and storyteller Tania Allan signs tales in BSL. The evening concludes with an open forum for BSL-users to share their own spooky experiences together, just in time for Halloween. The event is for both BSL-users and non-BSL users alike. Free but ticketed.

Supernatural Tales From The Carpathian Mountains  

Storyteller Csenge Virág Zalka. Credit: Prohászka Szandra

Saturday, 15 October 2022
Sir Duncan Rice Library, First Floor 1, Meeting Room
4:00-5:30pm

Hungarian storyteller Csenge Virág Zalka, also known as The Multicoloured Lady. has travelled far and wide with a treasure of traditional folktales from her home country. Join her as she brings her stories to Scotland; be ready for an afternoon of wonder! Free but ticketed.

Stories from Deeside to India with Cathy Low  

in partnership with the Scottish Storytelling Centre

Tuesday, 12 October 2021
On-line via Zoom
7:00-8:00pm

Come on a story journey through time and space to hidden glens, haunted castles, enchanted forests, and Himalayan peaks as storyteller Cathy Low tells tales from her native Deeside and from her second home in India.

Storytelling Workshop: Telling Tales from Our Own Cultures

The Elphinstone Institute is partnering with the Scottish Storytelling Centre to host a two-part storytelling workshop for people who have moved to Scotland from other countries

Scotland is renowned for its talented storytellers, and we’re hoping to add to that number! Have you moved to Scotland from a different country? Are you interested in traditional tale telling? Do you like sharing your culture with other people and learning about other cultures?

If you answered yes, please join us for a free two-part workshop in storytelling, with the first being on Saturday, 7 November, 2–4pm, and the follow-up workshop being on Saturday, 21 November, 2–4pm.

Register quickly, as there is a limited allocation of twenty spots, but please ensure you can join us for BOTH workshops before registering.

The first workshop will be hosted by esteemed storyteller and North-East Makar, Sheena Blackhall. In this workshop you will be introduced to some traditional tales from the North-East of Scotland before we discuss the role of storytelling in our own lives and cultures. This will be a chance to share stories in a friendly and safe setting, and explore what storytelling is all about.

The second workshop will be hosted by Pauline Cordiner, a wonderfully talented tale-teller who regularly regales Aberdonians with her gripping stories. This workshop is designed to give you the confidence to tell tales from your own cultures. In this session we discuss what makes a good storyteller, and share some tips about ways to make your tales as captivating as possible.

The wider goal of these workshops is to encourage people to share their culture with others in the North-East. Everyone has tales to tell, and we want to encourage people to share their tales with pride and enthusiasm. We are keen to host future storytelling events featuring tellers who have moved to Scotland from elsewhere, and we look forward to meeting some of you budding storytellers in our workshops!

The Elphinstone Institute hosts an annual Aberdeen event as part of the widely acclaimed Scottish International Storytelling Festival, organised by our friends at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

This year's event will be on Monday, 12 October 2020, 7.00-10.00pm via Zoom

Sinister an Spooky Stories fae the North-East

part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival Go Local | External Event

Five of the North-East's finest storytellers explore the region's darker side in a collaborative online evening of sinsister and spooky stories. Join us to learn of the North-East's ghosts and ghoulies, its witches and warlocks. But don't just listen - we want you to share your own tales too. Whether you're from the North-East or whether you've moved to Scotland from elsewhere, we want to know the spooky stories you've grown up with, or maybe even experienced yourself. The event is open to all brave souls.

With Jackie Ross, Grace Banks, Sheena Blackhall, Pauline Cordiner and Diana Peers.

Entry is free but donations will be gratefully accepted. For more information, email us at elphinstone@abdn.ac.uk

The Elphinstone Institute hosts an annual Aberdeen event as part of the widely acclaimed Scottish International Storytelling Festival, organised by our friends at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

This year's event will be on Thursday, 24 October 2019 and we are pleased to host Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, storyteller from the Na-cho Nyak Dun First Nation in the Yukon, Canada.

Louise was nurtured by the traditional stories of her grandmother and has dedicated her life to collect stories by many more elders in the northern Yukon. Let her share this treasure with you, while she takes you to the outskirts of the Arctic Circle.

Castle of Stone and Sea: The Life, Songs, and Stories of a Nineteenth-Century Breton Woman

In partnership with the Scottish Storytelling Centre

Linklater Rooms – Free Admission

One of Brittany’s most acclaimed voices, Marthe Vassallo, shares emotions and awe as she retraces, via a treasure trove of documents, the life, song, and personality of an ‘obscure’ 19th-century woman, Maryvonne Le Flem. A story of poverty, pride, and mysterious islands, celebrating the power of speech and song.

Maryvonne would be a forgotten name in a registry, were it not for her encounter with Breton writer and folklorist, Anatole Le Braz, and musician Maurice Duhamel: the former collected pages and pages of her traditional songs and her stories, and gradually became a true friend of hers; the latter published over 60 of her tunes in his vast collection of traditional Breton music. It took Marthe Vassallo's curiosity, one century later, to find that all this corpus, as well as a portrait she had found, depicted the same person – and a fiercely interesting person at that.

Marthe Vassallo is hailed as one of the greatest voices in today's Breton music. A versatile artist, whose interests range from opera to many kinds of stage performance, she remains true to Breton traditional singing, collaborating with singers and musicians such as Gilles Le Bigot and Jean-Michel Veillon, the Bagad Kemper, Annie Ebrel, Nolùen Le Buhé, Philippe Ollivier and dance music band Loened Fall. In the past few years she has also become more visible as a writer. Her book+ CD Les Chants du Livre Bleu was distinguished in 2016 by the prestigious Académie Charles Cros.

Scottish International Storytelling Festival - Aberdeen Event

This event is co-sponsored by the Elphinstone Institute and the Scottish Storytelling Centre, and is part of the 2017 Scottish International Storytelling Festival, 'Open Word–Open World'.

A continuing collaboration between Pakistani singer Sara Kazmi and Scotland-based musician Sarah Hayes joins an exchange of stories and poems between Pakistani poet Shazea Quraishi and Scottish storyteller Ian Stephen. Enjoy a lively journey in music, song, story, and poetry from the Isle of Lewis to Lahore.

Sara Kazmihails from Lahore, Punjab in Pakistan. She is a student of Indian classical music, and has been training as a vocalist for the past seven years in dhrupad and khayal singing. She has also been extensively involved with Punjabi street theatre, an experience that heavily inspired her use of folk forms in her performance. Sara enjoys singing the Punjabi kafi, a popular poetic form that draws on the oral tradition of the region.

Sarah Hayes is a flute player and singer from Northumberland. Based in Glasgow since 2005, she leads a busy and varied musical life performing, writing and recording with Admiral Fallow, Rachel Newton Band, Wildings, Alistair Anderson & Northlands, Sara Kazmi, Inge Thomson and more. Sarah’s debut album Woven – a studio reimagining of her Celtic Connections New Voices commission – has received widespread acclaim since its release in November 2015.

Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet, playwright and translator based in London.  Her poems have been published in the UK and US in publications including The Financial Times, Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her collection, The Art of Scratching, was published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2015 and she is developing a play based on her poetry chapbook 'The Courtesans Reply'. Shazea teaches with English PEN, Translators in Schools and The Poetry School.

Ian Stephen is from Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, and still lives there though he travels widely as a sailor as well as a performer, author and tutor. A graduate of Aberdeen University, Ian is a writer and storyteller as well as a volunteer skipper with traditional boat trusts on Lewis. His storytelling is indebted to his connections with the maritime world, developed during a Creative Scotland project to navigate through Scotland’s sea stories. He now passes on Lewis stories, some previously unrecorded and researches and revives Hebridean stories. He is the author of Western Isles Folk Tales, (The History Press, 2015), illustrated by Christine Morrison who also collaborated on his current book, Waypoints - Seascapes and Stories of Scotland's West Coast, (Adlard Coles Nautical/Bloomsbury, 2017). His poetry and fiction is published in many countries. A selected poems, Maritime, is published by Saraband, who also published his novel, A Book of Death and Fish.

2016 – Diaries of the Forest: Storytelling from the Amazon – Brazilian anthropologist and storyteller Betty Mindlin shares stories of her fieldwork and some of the myths of the Suruí Paiter from Rondônia in western Brazil.

2015 – If Stones Could Speak: Irish Tales from Liz Weir – Renowned storyteller Liz Weir comes to Aberdeen to share stories from her native Northern Ireland.

2014 – Stories and their Stories – Two of Scotland’s most celebrated storytellers, Lawrence Tulloch (Shetland) and Tom Muir (Orkney), in a night of exceptional stories from the Northern Isles.

2013 – Never-Ending Tales – An evening of traditional Traveller tales from the talented Aberdeen-born storyteller Tony Robertson.

2012 – Stories and Songs of Poland – Two of Poland’s most celebrated storytellers, Małgorzata Litwinowicz and Michał Malinowski, tell traditional stories from Poland and other countries.