Marion Oughton storyteller

Background information about my storytelling

2009-04-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

I love to listen to stories and to tell stories – that’s why I feel so lucky to work as a storyteller! I do performances of storytelling and storytelling workshops, for all ages and abilities. I started working professionally as a storyteller in 1985, my first ever paid storytelling work being for Birmingham Children’s Library Service, on the mobile library, during the summer holidays. I have worked since then in schools, libraries, hospitals, playschemes, festivals, universities, shopping centres, colleges, parks and more. I work with pre-school children, with pupils in Primary, Secondary and Special Schools and with adults.

The stories that I tell are based on stories that come from oral traditions and the majority have girls and women as the central characters: I like to do my bit towards redressing the balance, by telling stories in which strong, interesting females leave home, have adventures, make mistakes and surprise the listeners. I also tell autobiographical stories: I know that everyone can tell stories, but many people, both children and adults, believe that they can’t. Through my storytelling workshops, most of those people discover that they are able storytellers, if we begin with personal and family stories.

I am enthusiastic about helping adults to discover and develop their own storytelling skills and those of the children and young people with whom they work. By chance, I once met a teacher ten years after I had worked in her school and she told me that one of the stories I had told had become her favourite story to tell to her classes. She had developed it into an hour-long, interactive, problem-solving story that each new class looked forward to hearing, so that they could make their own version of it with her. She told me that it was both my style of storytelling and my way of running workshops that had inspired her.

How did I become a storyteller?

2009-04-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

I love telling stories and I'm often asked how I learnt to do it so well - did I go on a course or study storytelling at college - and what made me become a professional storyteller. The simple, two-fold reply is: firstly, my parents and sister used to tell stories to me when I was a child, as well as reading stories to me. That's how I learnt to do it so well, from their example. Secondly, years later, in the mid-1980s, as a teacher of English as a second language, in Birmingham, I often read stories to my pupils. When we had returned the books to the library, and they demanded the same stories again, I found myself telling the stories, as I didn't have the books to read them from.

I realised that this was what I wanted to do, to tell stories. Soon, my department head gave me the opportunity to tell stories in other Birmingham schools, by freeing me to offer myself as a storyteller, one afternoon a week, in place of my departmental meeting and this was the turning point. I have always been grateful to her for encouraging my emergence as a professional storyteller. The next major step was my Teacher Fellowship at Birmingham University, studying English in Education part-time and being Birmingham's storyteller in schools part-time. More gratitude from me, to the then inspector for English in Birmingham schools. I spent two terms running long-term storytelling projects in schools - from nursery to sixth form - with enthusiastic teachers.

After that, what could I do but resign as a teacher and try life as a self-employed storyteller? That is how I began life as a fulltime storyteller in September 1985.

Workshops for children and young people

2009-04-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

My workshop style is highly interactive, based on pair-work - which I have been using since I began telling stories in Birmingham schools in 1984. I work with one class, or class-sized group, at a time and in a day I do a maximum of four workshops, lasting for approximately 30 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on age and ability.

The stories I tell in these workshops are usually based on stories from oral traditions. With people from as young as 4 years old, I tell a story, during which I stop from time to time, to give the participants listening tasks, in pairs. They share their ideas about the characters; they solve problems; they make up parts of stories. Sometimes each pair meets another pair, to listen to, for example, their ending of the story or to find out how they felt about the story they had heard. The groups may grow larger and the workshop may end with some individuals choosing to tell their ending of the story to everyone in the room. Often, a teacher will tell me that a pupil who told their story to the whole class is someone who usually does not speak in front of a large group. For me this is proof of the value of the work I do.

Sometimes, I run a workshop of autobiographical and family stories, in which I tell a few stories to spark off the participants' memories or their imaginations - I have no interest in insisting on literal truth in these workshops. Rather, I aim to encourage the participants to tell stories to small and larger groups, so that their confidence and self esteem can grow. They tell in pairs and then in fours and so the groups grow, the stories retold and embellished or pared down to the minimum, by the retellings to new audiences. Finally, some participants may tell a story to the whole group although, for me, that is not the aim of the workshop. The aim is for everyone to be able to tell their story, whether to one person or many.

I encourage the organisation where I'm working - school, library, playscheme, college etc - to arrange for as many staff as possible to observe my workshops, so that they can use in their own work whatever they find useful in what they observe me doing with their young people. Other observers are also always welcome to attend my workshops: parents, students, teachers from other classes or schools, governors, trustees, visiting librarians, councillors...