Ideas for Hosting a Storytelling Event

• As part of your oral history project, your group could plan, coordinate and host an event in which people tell their stories and the community comes to listen and learn.
• Plan a good time to host the event. It could be part of a spring festival, Hamlet Days or Nunavut Day.
• Or it could be a small event at the Community Learning Centre, library or school as part of the literacy group’s program.
• Your group can act as the hosts and organizers for the storytelling event. This work will build the skills and confidence of the literacy group members.
• As a group, brainstorm all the tasks necessary to organize the event: identifying storytellers, arranging the location, advertising, organizing the schedule for the performance, writing introductions for the storytellers, and so on. Decide if you will need a budget for the event. Will you pay storytellers? Will you charge admission? Do you have to pay to rent space? List your expenses and make a budget. Make a work plan with dates when the tasks should be completed. Divide up the tasks. Post the work plan where everyone can see it and be sure of their jobs.
• Break into groups to write introductions for each storyteller. Ask the storytellers for brief information about their lives and about the stories they plan to tell. Write the information on cards. You can use these cards to introduce each storyteller to the audience. Each literacy group member could be prepared to make at least one introduction during the event.
• The facilitator teaches mini-lessons on the writing process, syllabic keyboarding, grammar and any other topics as they come up.
• Create an attractive program to hand out during the event; you could consider adding digital photographs of the storytellers or artwork from the literacy group members.
• Hold several practice sessions without the storytellers so everyone becomes comfortable and knows their roles and the order of the program.
• You could hold the event in a large room with one storyteller telling at a time.

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