Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival returns in 2022 (Friday 2 September – Sunday 4 September) with a weekend of folk tales, myths, folklore, fairytale films, workshops, story walks, talks, book events, discussions, and special events on the subject of borders, migration and a sense of the otherworld, centred in Wales but travelling round the world.
Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival is the vision of Peter Stevenson, Storyteller, folklorist, illustrator, artist – a unique festival which merges his eclectic career and interests delivering a festival which merges exhibition, performance, literature and film.
The programme will include Daniel Morden & Hugh Lupton, Cath Little & Chandrika Joshi, Michael Harvey & Pauline Down, Phil Okwedy, Fiona Collins, Frances Roberts Reilly, Ffion Philips, Ailsa Dixon, Deb Winter & Gillian Stevens, Carl Gough, local storytellers Milly Jackdaw, Halo Quin, Ailsa Mair Fox and local musicians Georgia Ruth and Iwan Huws. The visual and oral storytelling workshops will be delivered by Ruth Koffer, Peter Stevenson, Valeriane Leblond and Maria Hayes.
The festival, which is held at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, will also be supported by Beyond the Border and the Mycelium Storytelling Hub to help support Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival to develop into an exciting annual event, developing storytelling for artists and audiences, while keeping it unique to Aberystwyth.
Sandra Bendelow, Festival Manager from Beyond the Border Storytelling Festival said, “We are thrilled this year to select Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival to be supported by the Mycelium Storytelling Hub. It is a great festival which is uniquely Peter Stevenson and uniquely Aberystwyth. We hope that by working with Peter we can make the festival resilient for the future so it can continue, celebrating the community of oral and visual storytelling that Peter has created in Aberystwyth. We hope that it will inspire others to create similar festivals throughout Wales, now more than ever we need stories to bring us together, to laugh and cry and most importantly just enjoy live storytelling performances again. Stories of creation myth, flood myths, connection and disconnection from our homelands and landscapes, climate chaos, Siani Pob Man, Romani identity, are just a few of the subjects unfolding in the programme Peter has drawn together.”
Founder and Artistic Director of Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, Peter Stevenson says he can’t wait to see some of the best storytellers from across Wales and the UK perform in Aberystwyth. “This year, Phil Okwedy will perform his new show The Gods are all Here, developed with Adverse Camber, which tells the story of Phil’s Welsh mother and Nigerian father, and his own life growing up in South Wales, told through personal memories and traditional tales. Phil has been to almost all the Aber festivals and has become a much-loved favourite here. Daniel Morden and Hugh Lupton will be with us this year, and Cath Little, Fiona Collins and Michael Harvey. And Ffion Phillips, Young Storyteller of Wales, fresh from her GCSEs, will present her first ever show. We’ll also welcome Frances Roberts Reilly, Canadian Welsh Romany storyteller and poet, and we’ll show films from the Seneca Nation. Chandrika Joshi will tell the tale of her own personal migration after she and her family were forced to leave Uganda in 1972 and were placed for a few months in Tonfanau RAF camp near Tywyn. For many reasons, Chandrika’s story has personal memories for me.
This year, too, we received a grant from the Anna Evans Fund to invite a group of visual artists to create workshops throughout the festival based on visual storytelling. Anna was a wonderful Welsh language storyteller and visual artist in her own right, and she loved working with groups of young people who would be hanging on to her every word, especially as she loved dressing up. We were once booked to tell stories together in the neighbouring village of Llandre, and Anna caught the bus dressed as a milkmaid carrying a yoke and a bucket which she then carried 2 kilometres to the venue, telling tales as she went. Chwedlau.”
A weekend ticket for the festival is £50, individual tickets are available for all storytelling and music performances in Theatr Y Werin and all the cinema programme in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
Tickets are available from Aberystwyth Arts Centre Box Office on:
aberystwythartscentre.co.uk
01970 623232
