Camp Fire Storytelling. Coachella, CA 2009
It’s funny how you can put thoughts about a particular subject out there and other creative souls, eventhough they may be 1000’s of miles away are also picking up the same signals. 
Over the past week, I have been having many conversations with friends about storytelling, the importance of it, the lack of it and how we wish we were better at it. I enjoyed reading this post that Amelia put up over the weekend about Storytelling and her desire to research more about this and I also wanted to share some thoughts. 
Having recently experienced the joy of hearing good stories at Squam from lovely narrators like Jen Lee, its made me ponder the importance. Do children & teachers still share stories at school? Do parents still tell bedtime stories? What stories in our everyday lives help us get through the day or a difficult time in our lives? What about all the stories our grandparents have about their lives we know nothing about, or our parents? How can we capture those to help us grow and shape ourselves into better human beings aswell as stretch our own creativity? 
I want to HEAR more stories 
and
I want to TELL more stories.

“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive” Quote from Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams

A lovely Squam friend is coming to visit NYC in November so we hope to catch some good old fashioned storytelling at The Moth on Nov 16. If you are in the area, come along. 🙂 A couple of other resources include: Storycorps, International Storytelling & festivals. Please add any you know below in the comments.

I’d love to hear what you think about storytelling. 
How important do you think it is for our creativity, our lives and generations to come?