The Global Storytelling Renaissance
The first American National Storytelling Festival took place in Jonesborough, Tennesee  in 1973. Since then storytelling centers and festivals, such as the International School of Storytelling in Great Britain, continue burgeoning throughout the world. The National Storytelling Network (NSN) and the International Storytelling Center (ISC) focus the many ways that storytelling impacts our lives. 

To explore how storytelling can intentionally serve as a healing art, see the ever-expanding Healing Story Alliance at www.healingstory.org.  This  international community of therapists, clergy, health care practitioners and many others share discoveries and questions about story as a way of empowerment and healing.

See Nancy Mellon's (Chapter 4) "Caretakers of Warmth and Wonder"  in The Swing of the Pendulum: The Urgency of Arts Education for Healing, Learning, and Wholeness  by Diane Caracciolo and Courtney Lee Weida (Editors) Sense/Brill 2017

Starting a steady practice of storytelling is a way to claim free time to nourish your deepest humanity. It may seem very challenging these days to gather as families, as friends and as communities to pause, to breathe and to deepen our listening.   Yet with time for truths to be spoken and heard, we can restore essential heart and soul to our daily lives. We can deepen our listening to ourselves and one another,  and discover delightful, refreshing  guidance .