The partnership was carried out in six meetings, one per partner country except in Sweden where we had two separate meetings (one for the workshop, one to attend the Festival). In the first two meetings (Italy and Poland) the program was organized with a two-day workshop plus attendance at the respective Festivals. After the experience in Poland the leaders decided to extend the workshop time to three days for the subsequent meetings in Wales, Sweden and Greece.
During the workshops leaders guided learners through a series of practical experiments exploring different ways of creating multilingual storytelling performances, using different languages in one performance to convey the story or using simultaneous creative translations. After presenting the two different methods in the first two meetings (Italy and Poland), the group carried out further research during the meetings in Wales and Sweden aimed at discovering better ways to use translation in at least three languages at the same time; and finally using up to five different languages in a multilingual performance during the meeting in Greece.
Each time the learners, coordinated by the leaders, had a chance to present the result of their research in front of the audience of the Festival in a dedicated event. The outcome of each of those presentations was then discussed by the workshop leaders and used as a guideline to organize the following meeting in the best and most effective way. During the final meeting in Greece the whole group worked on creating a multilingual presentation of stories from the Odyssey which were delivered twice as an ensemble piece during the Storytelling Festival that followed the workshop. This work was coordinated by the Greek storyteller Manya Maratou, expert in Homeric epic material.
During the course of the partnership a major improvement was noticed in the results obtained by the participants in their presentations, in particular by the ones who benefited from more than one mobility, as a strong sense of group developed among them and they felt freer and more at ease in their work. The leaders also developed a better understanding of their mutual knowledge and different ways of communicating it. Paola Balbi (Italy) and Michael Harvey (UK) found a very effective way of delivering workshop sessions together and have been in constant touch in between meetings. Following the enthusiastic feedback of the trainees in the different partner countries they have been asked to lead workshops on multilingual storytelling in other contexts and at other Storytelling Festivals. Trainer Peter Hagberg (Swe) and trainee Sarah Rundle (UK) created a bilingual performance, first shown Dec 2012 in Stockholm and now sold by Fabula. Trainees Martina Rigoni (Italy) and Nausicaa Kapsala (Greece) have also created a good artistic partnership using three languages: Italian, Greek and English. In July 2013 they presented "White as Snow and Red as Blood" at Raccontamiunastoria Storytelling Festival with great success. Inspired by attending the BtB Festival (Wales) Grupa Studnia O (Pol) created two events - a bilingual (Polish/English) performance with Tuup (UK); and Earth Tales, a series of multi-lingual events of ethnic stories and music with local refugees. All of these events were seen and enjoyed by large audiences from our local communities.
Many participants have been inspired to continue with aspects of this work. Trainee Chiara Visca (Italy) started a trilingual edition of the Festival Internazionale di Storytelling Raccontamiunastoria in her home town of Bolzano and has managed to obtain a grant to do so in 2012 and 2013. Dafydd Davies-Hughes (UK) has launched a programme of multilingual storytelling events at his base in Wales aimed at using storytelling to promote inter-cultural exchange (trainee Martina Rigoni (Italy) is one of his invited storytellers for 2014). Phil Okwedy (Wales) has begun to use his experience of bilingual storytelling as a learning tool for his work among Welsh-speaking Primary schoolchildren. Fabula now offers performances and workshops with British storytellers to Swedish schools all year round. This is to cite just a few examples.
Meanwhile, representatives of the partner organizations made reports on the project during the annual Conference of FEST (Federation for European Storytelling) 2012 (Belgium) and 2013 (Italy) in front of representatives of leading Storytelling organizations from all over Europe and the world, including observers from Singapore, Canada, U.S, Australia and Palestine. At the end of the project, some of the participants felt more inclined to follow the path of translations and some the one of multilingual performances, but all agreed on the fact that although the amount of preparation and rehearsal that this work requires should not be underestimated, it is indeed possible to make a multilingual storytelling product that can be understood by an international audience.
During the workshops leaders guided learners through a series of practical experiments exploring different ways of creating multilingual storytelling performances, using different languages in one performance to convey the story or using simultaneous creative translations. After presenting the two different methods in the first two meetings (Italy and Poland), the group carried out further research during the meetings in Wales and Sweden aimed at discovering better ways to use translation in at least three languages at the same time; and finally using up to five different languages in a multilingual performance during the meeting in Greece.
Each time the learners, coordinated by the leaders, had a chance to present the result of their research in front of the audience of the Festival in a dedicated event. The outcome of each of those presentations was then discussed by the workshop leaders and used as a guideline to organize the following meeting in the best and most effective way. During the final meeting in Greece the whole group worked on creating a multilingual presentation of stories from the Odyssey which were delivered twice as an ensemble piece during the Storytelling Festival that followed the workshop. This work was coordinated by the Greek storyteller Manya Maratou, expert in Homeric epic material.
During the course of the partnership a major improvement was noticed in the results obtained by the participants in their presentations, in particular by the ones who benefited from more than one mobility, as a strong sense of group developed among them and they felt freer and more at ease in their work. The leaders also developed a better understanding of their mutual knowledge and different ways of communicating it. Paola Balbi (Italy) and Michael Harvey (UK) found a very effective way of delivering workshop sessions together and have been in constant touch in between meetings. Following the enthusiastic feedback of the trainees in the different partner countries they have been asked to lead workshops on multilingual storytelling in other contexts and at other Storytelling Festivals. Trainer Peter Hagberg (Swe) and trainee Sarah Rundle (UK) created a bilingual performance, first shown Dec 2012 in Stockholm and now sold by Fabula. Trainees Martina Rigoni (Italy) and Nausicaa Kapsala (Greece) have also created a good artistic partnership using three languages: Italian, Greek and English. In July 2013 they presented "White as Snow and Red as Blood" at Raccontamiunastoria Storytelling Festival with great success. Inspired by attending the BtB Festival (Wales) Grupa Studnia O (Pol) created two events - a bilingual (Polish/English) performance with Tuup (UK); and Earth Tales, a series of multi-lingual events of ethnic stories and music with local refugees. All of these events were seen and enjoyed by large audiences from our local communities.
Many participants have been inspired to continue with aspects of this work. Trainee Chiara Visca (Italy) started a trilingual edition of the Festival Internazionale di Storytelling Raccontamiunastoria in her home town of Bolzano and has managed to obtain a grant to do so in 2012 and 2013. Dafydd Davies-Hughes (UK) has launched a programme of multilingual storytelling events at his base in Wales aimed at using storytelling to promote inter-cultural exchange (trainee Martina Rigoni (Italy) is one of his invited storytellers for 2014). Phil Okwedy (Wales) has begun to use his experience of bilingual storytelling as a learning tool for his work among Welsh-speaking Primary schoolchildren. Fabula now offers performances and workshops with British storytellers to Swedish schools all year round. This is to cite just a few examples.
Meanwhile, representatives of the partner organizations made reports on the project during the annual Conference of FEST (Federation for European Storytelling) 2012 (Belgium) and 2013 (Italy) in front of representatives of leading Storytelling organizations from all over Europe and the world, including observers from Singapore, Canada, U.S, Australia and Palestine. At the end of the project, some of the participants felt more inclined to follow the path of translations and some the one of multilingual performances, but all agreed on the fact that although the amount of preparation and rehearsal that this work requires should not be underestimated, it is indeed possible to make a multilingual storytelling product that can be understood by an international audience.
