Sue Macmillan
Performance:
Alongside her coaching and training work Sue is a free lance performance storyteller. She has established her own storytelling club near Milton Keynes where she tells myths folk tales and wonder tales with Hannah. She has full storytelling shows autobiographical and historical and has performed at music events and festivals, at weddings and birthdays as well as Greek Myths at the top of Mount Olympus!
Training:
Nov 2010 - Feb 2011 Beginners Art and Craft of Storytelling led by Roi D'Or International School of Storytelling, Forest Row (in association with Brighton University)
July 2012 Autobiographical Storytelling and the Greek Myths - Speaking to The Stars run by Roi D'Or & Stella Kassimati & Friends of Amani In association with the International Schools of Storytelling, Amani, Crete.
Jan 2014 Creative Writing and Narrative Arts Summer School run by Shonaleigh & Simon Heywood, at Halsway Manor, Wales.
May 2015 - Storytelling Workshop with Ben Haggarty, At the Unicorn Theatre, London
Oct - Dec 2015 Advanced Storytelling – Presence, Character and Humour Led by Ashley Ramsden at the International School of Storytelling, Forest Row,
March 2017 Storytelling and Healthcare led by Roi D’Or + Daniela Scaglione
Clients include: YMCA, Macmillan Cancer Voices, Egmont Trust, SOFAR, Migrants Unite, Woodhill Prison - mental health team, Essex County Council, NATO, Herts and CNWL NHS Trusts, Community Foundation.
Sue is a professional storyteller and facilitator, working with a wide range of stories, from ancient myth to personal narratives. As a narrative practitioner she explores people's connection to their own and others' stories.
Sue believes that everyone's story is important and that everyone has the capacity for life long growth and change. It is these connections that determine who and how we are in the world. Sue is particularly interested in the connecting and reconnecting of circles that bring the different threads of our experience together. One common thread has been that of the active listener of stories highlighting the critical connection between teller and listener.
Narrative Practice: Sue began her working life as an NHS physiotherapist listening to her patients' varied personal histories. She became fascinated by how the stories we tell ourselves, in this case those of illness and recovery, can influence our future paths. Changing the story can change that future path. She now works as a coach and facilitator for organisations in leadership development using a narrative based approach. She runs workshops in narrative practices for small groups.
Storytelling in the Community: Returning to her interest in health she works with individuals in the hospice setting looking at ancient myths in the context of personal narrative. She has run community projects with local village organizations to develop a DVD of narrative memories from elderly residents.
Hannah McDowall
Hannah started her career as a research biologist but switched to International Development after discovering that you can indeed spend too long on your own with insects. Ten years working in the Global South taught her how to listen without judgment and how to ask the right question at the right time; essential skills for the storyteller.
In 2010 Hannah met Liz, a storyteller in Belfast using story to bridge the different communities there. She witnessed how metaphors, polished through generations of oral telling, hold within them more truth and complexity than many of the 'scientific' theories underpinning her career thus far. So in 2011 she did her first course in storytelling.
The next few years were spent developing a repertoire, doing more training (see below) integrating storytelling techniques into her work as a social enterprise researcher, writing and performing shows with her colleague Sue Macmillan and studying mythology.
In 2014 Hannah become a freelance storyteller. She specialises in training charity and policy workers, entrepreneurs and academics how to use storytelling in their communications; crafting into stories real life experiences to reveal who they are, what they do or what a dry research finding really means. Her clients (listed below) use this learning to influence (policy makers, funders, potential clients or supporters), to teach (students and the curious), and to connect (community, general public, friends and family). Recently, she has been funded to develop a storytelling-based course to prepare people for retirement and has delivered this in a range of employment and community contexts.
Alongside this Hannah performs as a storyteller, telling traditional stories such as myths, legends, fairy tales and folk tales, as well as biographical works and original pieces. Since 2012 she has run a regular storytelling circle in central London with two others and also tells on a monthly basis at a South London storytelling club and in Milton Keynes with Sue. She has performed and run workshops at the West Lexham Convergence Festival, at the International School of Storytelling in both the UK and South Africa, at the Use Your Voice Festival for young women in the Guiding Movement; to name but a few.
Hannah brings the same heart to storytelling as to research and believes there isn't much difference. Both, when done well, notice with great attention the 'is-ness' of things and try to share that with others so they can understand, feel and know themselves and the world a bit better. Using both science and story Hannah hopes she might bring a little nourishment, a little juicy goodness to share at the feast.
Clients and collaborators: UnLtd, TeachFirst, YMCA, Oxford Brookes University, UCL Business, Migrant and Refugee Community Forum, North London Cares, The Garden Classroom, Make=Sense, The Guiding Movement, the Age Action Alliance, Centre for Ageing Better, Oxfordshire LEP, Leeds City Council, Ageless Thanet, Southwark Council, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Wild Peace.
Training:
2016: One year course at the West-country School of Myth
2014: The Storyteller in The Community, hosted by the International School of Storytelling in Cape Town South Africa
2012: Speaking To The Stars, autobiographical storytelling
2011: International School of Storytelling in East Sussex, UK.