Donald Smith is Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre. He describes the key skills of storytellers, a new qualification for storytelling, and the career of a storyteller.
"I've worked as a literary researcher. I've worked in small-scale theatre, literary theatre, beginning as a stage manager and then directing and writing and producing.
"But the storytelling renaissance, if you like, has been my main concern and activity for about the last decade."
Key skills of a storyteller
"A storyteller has to shape the story in a way that's going to be engaging to the audience."
"I think there are three things going on simultaneously:
- A storyteller is a kind of editor-on-the-hoof. They have to be able to shape the story, to revise the story, to reinterpret the story in a way that's going to be engaging.
- They have to be good communicators, presenters, appealing to the immediate audience.
- The good storyteller is somebody who can read response, who can harness response. Who can engage that response and take it further, as some sort of further creative activity or play or investigation or process."
Storytelling as a full-time career
"There are people who are making their complete living as storytellers. Most of them would be doing a certain amount of training workshops alongside their performance work.
"I think also that they would do a lot with schools, which is very much a kind of bread and butter: schools and libraries.
"But I think there are also many other people who have storytelling skills as part of a range of things that they are doing. In some ways that actually works quite well."
What makes a good storyteller?
"There are many other people who have storytelling skills as part of a range of things that they are doing."
"People who are really interested in human beings and really interested in life make good storytellers.
"It's almost a character-personality thing, rather than a professional background, because actually the variety of people who get involved is astonishing."
Working at Giant’s Causeway
Running a creative event
Supporting writers in schools
