World Storytelling Day 2017
March 20th is World storytelling day 2017. To honor the great art of storytelling, The storytellers for peace group will be celebrating this year in their own unique way. See Below;
After Rudyard Kipling’s If, Imagine and Human Rights Day, here we are to a new video from the Storytellers for Peace group. World Storytelling Day is an event celebrated every year around the world near March 20.
This year’s theme is transformation. So, we tried to answer this question: how writing and telling stories may transform the world in a better place?
Twelve storytellers from ten different countries tell their responses.
In order of appearance:
Stories help us grow up. They heal us and heal wounds. Fairy tales have taught us that throughout life we can meet fierce wolves. And some wolves will be able to knock down many houses, but not all. And that even some wolves can burn in the fireplace. The stories help us to face the fears. And above all, stories break boundaries.
Beatriz Montero (Spain)
Once upon a time, a library, the Naus room, a palace, a children's wheel, the books, Sintra, the World, the poets and writers, the hour of the story. The memories of the summer revived his memory, the sea, the beach, the shells, and the bottle filled with sand and water.
Jozé Sabugo (Portugal)
Good stories transform fools in happy people for a day and false stories transform thieves in forever dictators, deep stories turn children into men who do not forget and the great stories transform everything and everyone.
The forbidden by the top stories erode the skyscrapers from the bottom and the stories told from the bottom to the top no longer stop, because no one could do it.
The invented stories alleviate the wounds of the heart and the true stories give meaning to those same wounds.
The stories transform the writer and the listener in a story that despite all the ugliness of the world, will ever be worth living.
Cecilia Moreschi (Italy)
The world became hard and difficult to few persons, it gave everything to many, it filled so much suffering, convinced that they can do nothing. Instead of complaining that life is unfair, let’s stand up together to change it. Instead of blaming sitting all the day, no change can take place without a struggle. Those who have left in history as a famous, we must remember, they sacrificed their lives for change.
Hamid Barole Abdu (Eritrea)
Witch’s one-times- one. You shall see, then. From one make ten. Let two go again, make three even, you’re rich again. Take away four. From five and six, so says the Witch. Make seven and eight, so it’s full weight: and nine is one, and ten is none. This is the Witch’s one-times- one.
Katharina Ritter (Germany)
Human beings are made of stories, not atoms. And then human beings will transform the world. Without stories, without tales, we would become artichokes, peas, swallows, squids, tomatoes. Well, yeah, living beings, but much more boring.
Enrique Páez (Spain)
To make a story we need the words. To make the words we need the letters. To write the letters it takes two people: who is willing to say something and who has the time to listen. Only two words are enough for two people, but to ensure that they meet and love each other we need a story to transform them into someone new and different. Because without the stories we are as people, words and letters. Alone.
Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher (Italy)
Transformation is part of our life. Transformation is part of humanity. Transformation is part of the use of the word. Transformation is part of the storytellers. The word is on the way of transformation. The language is not one, are miscellaneous. The language can divide us, but the word itself… the feeling and the emotion… everything that conveys in its essence, it’s something that joins us. Join us all.
Sandra Burmeister G. (Chile)
Making a flower from a stone, making a heart from a flower, making a world from a heart is my transformation.
D.M.S. Ariyrathne (Sri Lanka)
The Story that Saved a People. Long ago, the Jewish people were threatened with utter destruction. But they had a great rabbi named the Baal Shem Tov, who knew the mysteries of the universe. And he took his disciples to a secret place in the forest, lit a sacred fire, and murmured a magic prayer. And a miracle was brought about, and the people were saved. But as time went by, after the Baal Shem Tov’s death, little by little this knowledge was lost, and finally there came a time in which the Jewish people saw themselves in danger again, and the rabbi that led them did not know the words to the magic prayer, nor the recipe for the sacred fire, nor even the secret place in the forest.
What he did know was the story. And that was enough.
Juliana Marín (Colombia)
Storytelling was the oldest form of education. So telling story is the planet earth’s passion. We know everything by stories. We learn everything by stories. We understand by stories. We write everything by stories. Our past means our story. Our present means our story. Our future means our story.
By this way, story means the overwhelming sense of endless possibilities for something new to exchange, to love, to progress, for technology and motivation to change. Story means the world of the imagination of the new galaxies, planets and stars.
Story means the story of the universe, story of the open sky, springs air immaculate garden of thoughts. And story means make impossible to possible by playing lively loving tolerant music. Because Story is knowledge. Story is science. Story is power. Story is history. Story is civilization. Story is power. Storytelling is a game, What all we do. So who can speak or tell, he or she is a storyteller. Today, our story is in which way we can transform the world in a better place by writing and telling stories. Yes, we can.
We can transform the world more transparently by our writings and telling stories. We can even create a happier, more comfortable, more aesthetic, stronger more real heaven for everybody to live a pretty simple life with the sense of everyone is equal with dignity, if we imagine, if we wish.
Mahfuz Jewel (Bangladesh)
This is a story about the ultimate transformation. One day there were very, very dark clouds forming in the sky. And there was that ominous feeling before a storm. And then out of the darkest and biggest cloud fell a very big and very round raindrop. And this raindrop took a good look at itself and it said: “My, but I’m a very bit and a very round andma very beautiful raindrop. Why I must be the best raindrop in the whole sky!” Well there was a raindrop falling beside that big round raindrop. And that raindrop said:
“Mmmmm, you are very big and very round and rather beautiful, but I am very shapely therefore I am the best raindrop in the whole sky.” “Oh I don’t think so,” said the big round raindrop. “I’m going to ask this raindrop on the other side of me who’s the best out of the two of us.”
And the raindrop on the other side said: “Mmmmm, you are very big and very round and the other raindrop is very, very shapely but everybody knows that it is purity that counts. And I am very, very pure. Therefore I am the best raindrop in the whole sky.”
Well before any of the other two raindrops could make any sort of reply all three of them hit the ground and became part of a very muddy puddle!
And that’s a story by the English comedian Terry Jones called (I think it’s) The Raindrops.
Suzanne Sandow (Australia)
ABOUT STORYTELLERS FOR PEACE
Storytellers for Peace is an international network of narrators who create collective stories through videos. Artists and stories are from all over the world and speak about peace, justice, equality and human rights. All participants tell one or more verses of the story in their first language. The project was created and is coordinated by Alessandro
Ghebreigziabiher, author, storyteller, stage actor and director.
To learn more, visit their website, follow them on Facebook and Subscribe to their youtube channel.
Website: http://www.storytellersforpeace.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StorytellersforPeace/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcxcR5hSFUgzpYhpIMfbAzA
