The Group Well O. Storytellers Association is a pioneering group of storytellers in Poland, formed in 1997 in Warsaw. It regards the art of storytelling as instrumental to understanding other cultures and draws on many narrative traditions and techniques in its storytelling practice,giving them a contemporary twist. It treats the art of storytelling as an individual’s artistic work and connects it with the extensive animation and education activity. The Association conducted many educational and artistic projects, including storytelling workshops for students, museum employees, librarians and teachers, and elderly people at the Third Age University in Warsaw. Part of its work is focused on the physically and mentally disabled people, for the members of the Association of Families and Friends of People with Intellectual Disabilities. The group has also published its own book, “Przyjemności opowiadania” (The Delights of Storytelling) in 2006. It organizes the annual International Festival of Storytelling Practices in Warsaw since 2006. Its 5 editions were very successful; the performances were watched by over 10 000 people. The idea of the festival is to present the art of storytelling in both traditional and contemporary perspective, to present the diversity of contemporary sources of storytelling and the diversity of contemporary culture where a story plays a significant artistic, animation and integrative part. Partners of the festival include Warsaw City Hall, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Institute of Polish Culture, Warsaw University. Group Well O. consists of 7 people, among whom there are speakers of Polish, English, French, Lithuanian, and Turkish.In the project “My Traditional Heritage, Our Stories” Group Studnia O. will contribute with repertoire of the Slavonic and Turkish oral tradition. As one of its members, Agnieszka Aysen Kaim, a storyteller – Orientalist is a translator of Turkish origin. Bringing trainees into the multicultural environment will help the old generations of Polish people, used to living in a homogenised society, to cope with the ethnicity of contemporary Poland. Sharing the stories of old generation with youngsters will give the chance to re-tell the old stories in a new manner. This project within its Turkish cultural involvement partly helps the initiative of deconstructing stereotypes of the context of the Greek-Turkish relations
