Spanish / Catalan / Basque / Galician

WORDS TO BRIDGE THE GAP

Those involved in oral narration spend their lives telling, saying, speaking; we are men and women of the word, of words, and we understand the power which hides behind them.  We know that words can destroy and build, push and hug, injure and cure... For that reason, in these turbulent times, AEDA wishes to condemn all forms of violence, whether verbal or physical, and is sending out an appeal for dialogue, an appeal to create spaces in which to meet and share words, places in which to cultivate words which can bridge gaps, build harmony and bring people together.

This is not just an appeal to our politicians, but is also an appeal to all those caught up in the mayhem of recent days; to journalists, to people from our culture, to public figures, to one another, to you, to us, to everyone.

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Spanish

When I first started storytelling back in 1993 I was very attracted to telling Inuit stories and used to ask my self~what right do I have to tell this story? When a story is not from my culture, why do you I want to tell it so much and how can I get under the skin of it.
How? When I have not been to where the story comes from?
This was a difficult question to answer.

Spanish / Portuguese

I first met Tim Bowley in 2004 at the PalavrasAndarilhas (Wandering Words) in Beja. He appeared to me a tall tree with a boyish twinkle in his eye. Beside him sat CasildaRegueiro, to “translatell” his stories into Spanish. Their pas de deux was wonderful to watch but what impressed me most was his voice and how it held us in a firm embrace and took us on journeys to far corners of the world but to places that were so close to our hearts. It was a mesmerising evening! 

Tim started coming to Portugal in the end of the nineties to tell and give training (1998 in Braga and then 1999 in Lisbon) and became one of the first international storytellers to gain attention from the Portuguese audience. Since then he has told stories to thousands of smiling listeners and shared his experience and knowledge with hundreds of teachers, educators, librarians and storytellers. But how come only then did I cross paths with this great storyteller? I was hooked from that moment on and drove miles to see him and Casildaand later also with Charo Pita whenever they told stories in Portugal. Amongotherplaces, Timtold in Braga, Beja, Lisbon, Oeiras, Pombal, Vila Nova de Paiva, Montemor, Vilamoura, Óbidos, Tavira, Coimbra,..

I was lucky enough to start chasing tale tellers before the crisis hit when libraries and municipalities in Portugal could still hire the best to come to our little garden by the sea. Tim Bowley is a name that brings smiles to many manyfaces here in Portugal. He has given several workshops, one of which was an intensive course in Oeiraswhich I was fortunate enough to be a part of, and many wonderful story filled evenings all over the country. Some of his stories and collections of tales have been published in Portuguese and are in the hearts and on the tips of the tongues of many storytellers here.Rare is the storytelling session, especially with children, when I don’t wip out his book, “Jamie and the acorns”, to play with the audience with the repetitions and remind us of the cycles of life and how important it is to persist in protecting them.