The East Anglian Storytelling Festival
I was delighted to be invited along to the Food Museum in Stowmarket for the East Anglian Story Telling Festival. For me this would probably be the shortest commute ever to a festival, just 25 minutes, on foot. Storytelling appeals to me, as a Dubliner “raised on songs and stories” I have always been seduced by song lyrics; melodies are a mystery due to my total lack of any musical talent whatsoever.
Now before we go any further, reviewing a storytelling festival is an act fraught with danger, for I am not a storyteller. I don’t believe my reading of the complete Harry Potter series as bedtime stories to my children qualifies me – even if I did invent all of the voices long before Ms Rowling decided that Warner Brothers could do a better job.
If I am honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect, normally I am hiding behind a camera in a press pit surrounded by loud music. The minute I arrived I knew I was out of my regular comfort zone. For this was a peaceful place, an air of serenity infused the late spring air, I could get to like this.
At the Stage in The Glade, I discovered Lisa Schneidau telling the tale of Yggdrasil the Ash Tree, a wonderful mix of Irish legend, English folklore and Nordic myth. She had me from the minute she started, for this is what storytellers do, they act the part, they become the story, and you are drawn in sentence by sentence. And where better to tell a tale about The Ash and The Elm than in the woods?
I met with organiser Marion Leeper at whose invitation I was there and we chatted about the festival:
TB: How long has this festival been going on?
ML: It started ten years ago. A bunch of storytellers got together and said, “Look, we’re out on the road all the time. We never meet; we never tell stories together. Let’s just get together in a field together for a weekend, tell stories. “
There wasn’t a field. It was better than that. We were in a pub, and we camped in the pub garden. It poured with rain, and it was great. So, we did it again.
We did it again and bit by bit people started to come and at a certain point we woke up and thought this is a proper festival, we need to do the thing properly.
We did our first grant funded festival the year that lockdown was just finishing and everybody was just so delighted not to be imprisoned in their house. We had such a good time. We’d been going from one place to another for years, then someone said she went to a festival here, at the Food Museum, and said this is the place we need. And we’ve been here ever since.
TB: I’ve just been listening, at your suggestion to Lisa Schneidau over in the woods. Where better to tell the tale of Yggdrasil that mix of Celtic and Norse legend.
ML: You know when you know how you want something to happen and in the end, it turns out better? Yes, it’s the brilliant thing about working with a really amazing team. That was exactly what I wanted that piece to be like.
TB: How much time is spent organising an event like this or, or does it is it now happening organically?
ML: I have a couple of months off around August, September, so no. But July, August, September, I start thinking about the grant application and then by January, you have to actually organise the whole festival and get exactly what you want to do. And then by the end of the year, we know whether we’ve got a grant, and we know whether we’re going to do a great big festival with loads of outreach and going to schools and reaching loads of different people or whether we’re just going to do straight down the road. And then, yes, it’s probably about a day a week for me. And then it ramps up and then it’s kind of all-consuming in the last couple of weeks.
TB: How big is the team behind the festival? It can’t just be just be you.
ML: It’s huge, this team. We’ve got a wonderful festival manager and we’ve got people who manage the volunteers and people who manage the traders. And, you know, everyone’s got their own little role. So, yeah, it couldn’t happen without quite a big team.
At this point we were joined by Veronica McKean, a former chair of the festival team, in another life, doing different things, Veronica and I got to know each other.
TB: Rumour has it, Veronica, that you started this thing.
VMcK: No, I did not. No. OK. There was a crowd who called themselves the East Anglian Fabulation. Well, actually at the time they didn’t even have a name! They got together in a pub and said “You know what would be great? Let’s do a festival.” And that was ten years ago. It basically started off in The Ship Inn, Blaxhall a beautiful pub but off the beaten track. Here at the Food Museum, there are train links from Stowmarket to Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich and Bury.
Having had Veronica corroborate Marion’s story about the start of the Storytelling Festival we chatted in the sun for a while. I am convinced that the world would be a better place if we had more storytellers. I was intrigued by the way these people research and seek out stories, the badger that becomes a teapot will haunt me until I learn more.
The Food Museum (formerly the Museum of East Anglian Life) is the perfect setting for this festival. There is room to breathe, room to relax, room to be alone or in company.
There are workshops and traders – alas I somehow contrived not to have a coffee and a story from Nick Hennessey’s ‘A Word in Your Ear’ coffee van. This man is far, far more than your average barista. I did however enjoy a ‘festive’ drink with friends. The label may have been old stock, but the beer was good.
I was transfixed by the poetry open mic curated by Justine de Miere, a storyteller in her own right. Although I have been to many musical open mics, this was my first spoken word experience. If you have a pre-conceived notion of what a poet looks like, what they sound like or what they write poetry about, you are probably mistaken.
The one who grabbed me by the metaphorical scruff of the neck and made me listen intently was young James – he had agonized through the afternoon about which poem to read. In the end he chose Neurodivergent Nature and what that meant to him. A member of my family, now in his late 50s, has recently been diagnosed as autistic. James didn’t know this, but his poem has helped me begin to understand, thank you.
This is the sort of festival where you can wander and discover or, if you choose, go through the program and cram in as much as possible. I chose the former, perhaps missing some of the highlights such as Daniel Morden, Malcolm Green and Xanthe Gresham-Knight. Nonetheless I came away with a sense of having experienced something very special.
Storytellers need listeners, the next East Anglian Storytelling Festival is scheduled to take place from 19th to 21st June 2026. I would recommend going along, if not for the whole weekend, then just for a day. It is the complete antithesis to mobile phone doomscrolling, more importantly you will feel better for it.
