Stories can illuminate our path through the forest of life and help us through difficult moments in our process. Nowadays it is easier for stories to find the people who need to hear them because of social networks like The Healing Story Alliance (HSA).  The HSA is centred in the USA and is an international network of storytellers, and other professionals, dedicated to exploring, promoting and applying stories for healing purposes. I visualize the HSA as a giant, friendly spider, spinning silken story threads to be weaved into nourishing stories to help people overcome difficult situations in the adventure of life, such as; bullying at school, recovery from additions, depression, serious illnesses such as cancer, or simply to accompany us at the end of our hero’s journey in the transition from this world to the next. 

There are other spiders spinning their generous, healing story threads in Europe. Symposiums dedicated to the healing power of stories are held each year in the North of Europe. These have been based mainly in the Scandinavian countries and Scotland. In 2014 it will take place in Finland.

Spanish / Catalan

Already a few decades ago M. Nisbert described that the fundamental characteristic of cultural cooperation is based both on the agreement standards organisation as on objectives. It is true that it also refers to spontaneous, traditional and automatic cooperation in a multitude of cultural events, but the outlines of the cooperation subject is design, management and articulation from public or private foundations that are based on the coordination of activities among institutions, companies or Governments to develop joint marketing plans.

More and more issues of cooperation are in common use and possess a wider dissemination in the mass media and society in general.

The cooperative work between libraries, administrations, institutions... leads to a better and more effective communication, teamwork, reducing costs and, ultimately, the optimisation of resources, as well as the union's efforts to achieve a common goal.

Professionals who work in the cultural field (entertainers, cultural managers, librarians, etc.), often work together with other colleagues that geographically are not close and that perform the same tasks.

Spanish / Basque

This document has been put together by the members of AEDA  and is an invitation to reflect on the different lines of training of oral narrators. In it we have tried to agree on the content and proposals that we consider recommendable when training storytellers.  We hope you find it interesting.

• WHAT WE TELL WITH. We think it is important to acquire concepts of body/body language, voice and stage presence. 

• THE VOICE ITSELF. We  believe that all training and exploration in order to consolidate the voice itself is always useful: to feed originality, find uniqueness, to create one's own style, to put together a personal repertoire..all of this gives colour to the development of the activity and honesty to the work.

• WHAT WE TELL (1). We feel that it is advisable to have knowledge of traditional oral texts, as frequent reading of these texts, together with the preparation and incorporation of them within one's repertoire, allows the internalization of structures and strategies which are “naturally” oral and essential for the normal development of our craft.

AEDA, the Spanish Professional Storyteller´s Association, is backing this initiative put forward by the storyteller Martha Escudero with the aim of spreading a message which, while obvious, is as yet little known among the adult public.

For that reason we are including this seal on the website home page and we are encouraging everyone (members, friends, the general public, those who live in the arms of stories...) to spread the word as much as possible (via Facebook walls, Twitter, blogs, …) in order that the message goes that bit further and that bit deeper.

Regards

also in Basque / Galician / Castilian / Catalan

Ana Griott was in Rome representing AEDA. This is the short text she read about us:

"AEDA (Spanish Professional Storyteller´s Association) is a young organization, born in 2010. Little by little our association is finding its own place in Storytelling world.

These are the three points that we would like to distinguish:

• We publish an online magazine (El Aedo) about professional and traditional storytelling world. Its third issue will appear soon.
• This year we are involved in protesting against the situation of the stage professionals in our country. The government has approved a VAT (value-added tax) increase, the biggest in the History of Spain, that will cause the end of spanish cultural activity, particularly Storytelling. A tax increase of 19 % threats to professional storytellers. The result of this arrangement goes like this: 500 storytelling performances programmed for the last quarter of this year have been suspended. 
• Therefore, we have been preparing manifestos and press releases expressing our opposition and supporting actions of peaceful protest. Last Friday, for exemple, some storytellers (members of Aeda and not) told stories in the street in front of the Modern Theater, in Guadalajara, closed by the provincial government. 

The stage places are closed but they can´t close our mouths.

If you want to know more about these matters you can consult our website. This has been one the most important achievement for last year: finally Aeda has a web in order to spread information on its activities, its members and the situation of Storytelling over the world.

And this is everything I can say in two minutes..."

AEDA, the Spanish Profesional Storyteller Asociation, and all who take part in it, wish you that the year 2013 may be forthcoming for the spoken word.
May the oral stories arrive to the houses and fill the squares; may they invite us to dream and to share.
We hope that 2013 may be a year full of words that help us to understand one another, and to meet and develop together.
So we may tell together a better world.

Spanish

AEDA, The Spanish Professional Storyteller Association, wishes to demonstrate in its support for the general strike called by the trade unions for Wednesday November 14. This strike has been called in protest at the decisions taken by the government, in their desire to destroy the welfare state, against state education, culture, and health care.
In addition, the Aeda membership wants to protest against the exceptional tax increases, which do not mean an improvement in the quality of public services, as well as against the damaging treatment of self-employed people by the government - a sector to which most of the Aeda membership belongs.
For these reasons, Aeda joins the general strike called for November 14 and invites other associations and every Storyteller to join it as well.