WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

Friday, July 13  Session A  10:30 am - Noon

Noa Baum

Treasure behind the Stove: Discovering Legacy through Storytelling  

What is our legacy? What treasures do we pass on to future generations? Storytelling can help uncover the treasure you have received and the legacy you will leave. This replicable storytelling model reveals how stories can serve as a map of your life's journey. Experience a thoughtful series of exercises, telling and hearing stories in a cordial and safe small-group setting, looking at your life as a story worth passing on. 

Willy Claflin

Will the Circle be Unbroken?  

Ray Hicks, Jackie Torrence, Gamble Rogers, J.J. Reneaux,...the list is long. How can we honor these modern masters, and keep their tales alive? We will discuss how to select, edit and organize material, secure performing rights, and find the balance between your own storytelling voice and the voice of the honored teller. Let's not leave the tales of master tellers locked away on the study shelf! Let's keep the circle unbroken, and keep the old stories flowing!  

Patrick Ryan

T3: Teachers Telling Tales  

We know storytelling develops children’s confidence and self-esteem, cognitive and social skills, literacy, oracy, and imagination. As storytellers become regular visitors in schools, teachers expect more, seeing tellers as partners in educating students, and resources for professional development. This session reports on an initiative training teachers to use storytelling and work with tellers as equals, drawing on successful storytelling residencies in schools. Participants will leave with new ides and skills for successful schools projects.    

Michael P. Sipiora

The Story at the Heart of Organizational Success  

A “narrative revolution” is occurring in organizational development—a radical conceptual shift from the outdated mechanistic, hierarchy model. This presentation answers the questions of why storytelling works and explores the kind of story that empowers an organization to work at its best. Learn about organizations as work communities whose cultures are created through their stories, and in which participants are most productive when their desire to make meaningful contributions intersects with their organizations’ stories.  

Jay O'Callahan

Bridging the Gap or Mending the Tear

Jay will discuss creating a story about family members, yours or someone else's, who has been forgotten or "discarded" by the family. The process itself is revealing and healing. Jay will tell short segments of his stories and give simple exercises that will draw out participants' stories. This is a participatory workshop.

Yvonne Young with Jeannine Pasini Beekman, Cynthia Changaris, Doug Lipman, Steve Otto, Marie Winger

NSN Conferences:  Why We Keep Coming, Directions for the Future

Help create the future of our conference. Our past can be very instructive in looking toward the future. Why do we keep returning to the National Storytelling Conference? And why should you? Panel members who have been to most or all of the NSN National Storytelling Conferences discuss the impact of the conferences on their artistic and personal lives. Hear participants’ ideas for changes in future conferences, and offer your insights and suggestions. 

Friday, July 13  Session B  3:30 - 4:45 pm

Sara Armstrong and Karen Dietz

Professional and Ethical Standards for Storytelling in Organizations

Learn the outcome of the SIO SIG's pre-conference session where they tackled avoiding pitfalls of working with stories in organizations, and promoting excellence. Hear first hand their experiences of establishing professional standards for the field, their conclusions, and next steps--and provide your input!  

Cygnus Storytelling   (Jenifer Strauss, Kevin Strauss, Mike Mann, Tina Rohde, Colleen Shaskin)

Balancing the Imagination Deficit One Story at a Time  

In a time of technological advancement and an information explosion, our children are experiencing an imagination deficit. Cygnus Storytelling will present a dynamic and compelling argument for the use of storytelling as a cognitive development tool, and empower participants to use “STORY” to link imagination to education. Cygnus will spotlight storytelling in emergent literacy, effects of media in the family, current brain research, and the positive impact of storytelling across curriculum and within the family. 

Lyn Ford

"Interactive" Storytelling and Academic Content Standards  

Your storytelling, as you present it now, meets the needs of educators who are striving to guide their students toward those benchmarks of English Language Arts and Fine Arts Academic Content Standards (and other indicators, too!). Discover the story-sharing skills you should emphasize and the "buzz words" you should know to promote your storytelling as a gift of enrichment for all types of learners.   

Mary L. Schmidt

The Black Dress:  One Woman’s Journey with Mental Illness  

When telling stories about mental illness, care must be taken to not perpetuate stereotypes. But how does one tell a story when audience members may represent different groups (caregivers, family members, clients, professionals, consumers, practitioners) and each group may “hear” a different story? This topic will be examined through performance, self-reflection, and discussion. Mary will present her story, The Black Dress (dealing with bipolar disorder) and share information on NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).    

Ann Scroggie

Storylabs Designed by You  

Have you ever wished that you could create your own workshop AND get credit? The Florida Storytelling Association has developed an affordable, story related educational opportunity called StoryLabs which does just that. By partnering with local organizations, nine StoryLabs have been established by the StoryLab Teams working in their own communities. FSA has developed guidelines, marketing materials and planning suggestions. Come and we will share the inside story with you.    

Limor Shiponi

Overtaking the Obstacle of Superiority: Defining and Achieving Storytelling Excellence  

Seeking, defining, and achieving excellence is what determines art from occupation. Not addressing the issue has allowed others to overtake the field treating is as a tool. Come and hear a new empowering perspective for observing excellence that takes an example from the discipline of music. Learn how to set degrees, enhance skills through graded exercises and performances, theoretical work and reflection upon the past for the sake of the future in this art. 

Saturday, July 14  Session C  8:45 - 10:15 am

Rachel Hedman

College Big Cats:  Tracking and Capturing the Performance  

Find your courage and hone your skills as you explore the terrain of college audiences.  Perhaps you attempted the stealth approach only to be caught in your own trap?  Strengthen your senses so that you can tie the proper bait, and, by doing so, discover beyond the university venues and onto the highly sought 18-30 year-olds.  Complete with statistics and student feedback for your ammunition, you will jump into the jungle again and again.  

Andre B. Heuer

9 Steps to Quality Storytelling: Getting Your Listener’s Feedback   

In this experiential workshop, you will learn an effective method of acquiring listener feedback to your storytelling. This method will help you enhance the quality of your storytelling, be a more engaging storyteller, bring lucidity to your stories, become more connected with your audience, and enrich your listener's appreciation of the art of storytelling. This nine-step approach can be used with individuals and/or groups and is especially productive in guilds and story circles. 

Steven H. Hobbs

Quilts, Stories and the Underground Railroad  

Quilts can be pieced together to tell historical and personal stories. Explore how quilting can be used to tell the Underground Railroad story and other tales. Learn how the craft of quilting can enhance storytelling presentations. Hear Underground Railroad stories and make sample quilting blocks using construction paper.    

Jim May  

Telling Stories of Grief

Storytelling can provide us with an opportunity to express grief in a way consistent with the highest values of artistic expression, to add emotional variety and texture to the audience’s experience, and to create community ritual. We only have one Viet Nam Memorial; what if each family, neighborhood, village, and community had a communal storytelling ritual where the telling of stories of grief was encouraged in order to heal and learn from the losses normally encountered in a lifetime?

Michael Parent

Grab the Space, Kids! -- Self-Expression through Storytelling  

This participatory workshop provides educators with tools to help children communicate more clearly through the use of storytelling. Attendees will participate in a series of exercises that they will later lead their students through. These exercises will help educators guide their students in "grabbing the space" and "getting the story across" -- how to present information (in story form), and thereby express themselves confidently and effectively in a variety of situations.      

Sadarri Saskill

Inside, Outside, Upside-Down!:  Building Stories from your Life  

How can we know where we’re going, when we can’t appreciate where we’ve been? The greatest story resource in the world is closer than you think. It’s you! Nationally recognized storyteller, Sadarri, shows you how to see yourself inside, outside, and upside-down. Participants are amazed at the stories just waiting to jump out! Techniques adaptable for intergenerational storytelling; middle and high school personal narrative or creative writing projects; social services; mental health fields; and more.    

Saturday, July 14  Session D  1:45 - 3:15 pm

Molly Catron

Understanding the Rhythm of Creativity  

What is this thing called creativity and how do I get it! What do I need to know to play with my muse and who is she anyway? Most of us ask these questions as we pursue our careers and explore the wonder of being an artist. This workshop explores one model for the creative process, and examines how we foul our own attempts to be creative and how organizations can do the same to employees. With this understanding, we can learn to flow through the whole process rather than shortcut it. We can learn how to dance with our muse.  

Elizabeth Ellis   (Intensive continued in Session E)

Giving Voice to Our Bodies  

Swallowing your pride...stuffing your feelings...Every BODY has an important story to tell. Yet, most of what we talk about where our bodies are concerned is superficial. Go deeper. Body talk, small group discussion, and guided imagery will be used to examine the issues surrounding your BODY's stories. Special considerations for crafting authentic and meaningful stories about your physical self will be explored. Excerpts from Elizabeth’s "larger" work "One Size Fits Some" will be included.    

Valda Morris-Slack

Tales from the American Folklife Center

In this workshop, the American Folklife Center (Library of Congress) hopes to raise awareness about its storytelling and oral history collections, which include the International Storytelling Collection, the StoryCorps Project, and the Veterans History Project. The workshop will include a description of AFC collections and information about accessing those materials. As well, the workshop will describe broadly AFC’s mission to preserve and present American folklife and will promote the inherent value of archival material to a community’s self-understanding.  

Beth Horner

Enriching Our Community: Celebrating Storytellers with Disabilities

A celebration and working session. A panel of touring storytellers with a wealth of experience and diverse disabilities will demonstrate how their disabilities impact and enrich the stories they perform, their audiences, and the national storytelling community. Workshop participants will then brainstorm the practicalities and questions of those with disabilities making the decision to tour and those sponsoring storytellers with disabilities. For event organizers and new and experienced storytellers with and without disabilities. Empowering, entertaining!

Susan Klein  had to cancel

Replaces Susan Klein's Intensive

Kevin Strauss

Getting Stories into Science: Adapting and Creating Environmental Stories   Learn how to adapt and create “environmental stories” for school and nature center programs. Using work developed as part of a 2005 NSN Brimstone Grant Project, Kevin Strauss will show teachers, naturalists and storytellers how to adapt traditional stories to teach environmental education concepts and how to create original factual stories about the animals, plants, and natural systems that flow through our world.   

Diane Williams

The Storytelling Classroom – Applications across the Curriculum  

The workshop focus - best practices for facilitating storytelling teacher workshops and classroom demonstrations. In this hands-on, highly interactive workshop, participants will explore how storytelling can be used effectively to link to National Standards in math, science, history, language arts and much more. Participants will go away motivated and prepared to enliven their teaching through story in Pre-K through 8^th grade. (Based on The Storytelling Classroom: Applications Across the Curriculum (Sherry Norfolk, Jane Stenson and Diane Williams)    

Priscilla Howe

Shake Your Sillies Out! Songs and Stretches for Young Children  

Join Priscilla Howe in a lively session of participatory songs and stretches, perfect for giving the antsiest listeners a break between stories and for channeling that fabulous audience energy. Priscilla has been gathering these wiggle breaks for years and will teach how, when and why to use them with young audiences. Be sure to bring your own songs and stretches to share with the group. Come prepared to move and have fun!    

Saturday, July 14  Session E  3:30 - 5:00 pm

Peter Cook and Keith Wann

Your Hands, My Eyes: Making Storytelling Festival Accessible for the Deaf Community  

Imagine that you are listening to a master teller and there was a problem with the microphone. You cannot hear the stories well. After the show, you feel discouraged. This often happens with the deaf audience. There are many reasons: lack of pre-festival preparation for interpreters, the lighting, and the quality of sign language interpreters. This workshop will focus on these problems and to learn how to make the programs more accessible for the deaf community.  

Lucy (Lockett) Grondahl

Imagination Stretching: Dragons and Taverns and Bears (Oh My!)  

Arlo Guthrie once said that ideas for stories and songs were like fish swimming by in a stream. The trick was to catch them. This workshop is designed to add more lures to your tackle box. Using word games, improvisation, and commitment to believing the unbelievable, this workshop is an aerobic workout for your imagination. There will be very little lecture, several handouts, some writing, lots of sharing and loads of laughter. Let’s go fishin’!  

Gert Johnson and Paula Weiss

Children at the Well: “Peace-ing” Together Diverse Groups with Youth Storytelling  

Come learn about this intergenerational Brimstone Award winning program that is working at building bridges within present and future generations. While this project has an interfaith (Hindu/  Jewish/Christian/Muslim) focus, it can serve as a model for storytellers  and teachers who wish to engage youth and their families in the process  of bringing about peace and understanding between any diverse groups  within their community. Our online "Children at the Well Kit" will help you get started.  

Susan O’Halloran

Citizen Storyteller: Who’s Controlling the Stories  

How are we acted upon by the stories in our culture? What stories ‘have’ us and what stories are we being told? Democracy requires informed citizens who critically examine the information they receive. Yet, today, many of the underlying messages we hear go unexamined. In this workshop, we will analyze how the use of language controls the story and how we can use the power of story to influence political discussion and social change.  

Lynn Rubright

Storytelling beyond the Beanstalk:  Jack Tales as Pathways to Literacy  

This energetic, humorous, interactive workshop is rooted in Lynn Rubright’s acclaimed, federally funded Project TELL (Teaching English through Living Language) for a St. Louis area school district in the 1980s. This motivational presentation will involve participants in playful expressive and visual arts activities that spin off the Jack in the Beanstalk tale to enhance literacy education. Content is designed for elementary age children, but applies to ALL ages in promoting literacy.  

Storytelling: Reflecting Our Past, Creating Your Future