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I have been telling, sharing and listening to stories, singing and running arts projects since the 1980s and continue to do so in the                               United Kingdom and overseas.

 A recent honour for me was to host the 10th birthday party at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London for Little Amal, (the giant puppet  who travelled 8,000km from the Syrian/Turkish border in support of refugees,) and for children from across London. Here little Tamarai presents Amal with a bracelet she had made for her.                      

                                                                                                       Photo by Yotam Ottolenghi

News​NEWSNews NEWSNews .........        

                                                                             

'Lo​ndon Folktales f​or Children' and'London's River Tales for Children' (History Press)  co authored with my colleague Anne Johnson and illustrated by Belinda Evans,  

Available in UK bookshops or can be purchased online.

Launched and published during National Storytelling Week in January 2019

ALREADY IN JULY of 2020 . . .

all copies had been sold and the publishers had to go for a second printing!

A sparkling collection of unexpected tales! Fiona Collins

London's psycho-geography, mapped in a 

collection of tales . Tremblr

See London with new eyes! A joy for story 

lovers and storytellers. Xanthe Gresham

Check History Press descriptions here:  



https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/londons-river-tales-for-children/9780750995610/

https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/london-folk-tales-for-children/9780750986892/


To buy a copy      UK:                £12.00 incl. postage

                              Worldwide:   £16.00 incl. postage

order here through PayPal     http://paypal.me/sefosef










These are some of the areas I work in:

Refugee Communities

Schools

Interfaith & Cross-Cultural Projects

Peace and Reconciliation Initiatives​

Libraries

Language Learning         

 Schools' work in Santiago de Chile

Refugees

Much of my work has been spent with refugees, people in exile and their children and families.Traditional stories are often a safe way of speaking the unspeakable, but the teller (the refugee) has the wonderful feeling of being heard. There is an emphasis on participants telling, retelling, remembering. voicing, singing the stories, most of which are traditional stories, most often from the refugees' own background. The telling of one's own personal story is a larger and more fraught issue: Sometimes when a refugee mother in faltering English, or in her own language and English, with help from friends, is telling a traditional story about loss, loneliness, justice etc. it comes across so powerfully, that everyone knows that it is HER story. She doesn't need to tell us that this did or did not happen to her. We know that she is feeling the story through her own experience.

I also work with groups of people who would like to use storytelling in their own work with asylum seekers, asylum detainees and refugees. Recent workshops have been held in the U.K., Greece and Belgium.

With the wonderful Charlie Higgs of Everyday Magic

Schools

I am so proud to be a part of Everyday Magic Storytelling which is a group of professional storytellers, musicians and visual artists committed to bringing live storytelling and music into London schools. I have also been working in schools in Chile, Argentina and China with Dream On Productions, doing similar work internationally. 












With the wonderful Charlie Higgs of Everyday Magic

Words used with teachers :

Literacy - Numeracy - Oracy

Development of Listening Skills

Speaking Skills - Social Skills

Coordination Skills -

National Curriculum Minimum requirements

Words used with children :

Sing - Tell - Move

Listen - Whisper - Shout

Dance - Enjoy - Share








Schools' Storytelling and Workshop Tour, China 


Interfaith & Cross-Cultural Projects

I have worked in Mosques,  Synagogues, Meeting Houses, Churches and many Interfaith and Cross-Cultural Projects where one of my favourite questions is to ask people which faith community they think the story comes from. So often people think that the Jewish story they have heard and enjoyed, is Islamic, or the Muslim story has a Christian message. They are often amazed when I tell them that the tradition it comes from is not what they thought. I often hear, "that's just like one of ours".. . And, in a way, that's half of what I'm trying to get across i.e. other people are just like us! 


EAST Storytelling Project:

https://www.daedalustheatre.co.uk/wp/projects/east/


                                                                                                              Working with Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Druze & Atheists,Galilee, The Holy Land

Peace& Reconciliation

I have been involved in Peace& Reconciliation projects since the early 90s in London, Northern Ireland and in Armenia-Azerbaijan; I worked in Israel and Palestine on the 2009 Healing Words Project led by Roi Gal-Or from the International School of Storytelling, and have continued to regularly visit such places as Nablus and the troubled city of El Khalil-Hebron in the West Bank. I have worked with various wonderful Israeli organisations who actively promote dialogue and contact despite the conflict, including working with Palestinians and Bedouin living in Israel, and with Palestinians trying to farm their own land 'illegally' in the southern hills around Yatta/Sousia. 

Nearer to home I have had an very active involvment with The Foundation for Peace in Warrington, England foundation4peace.org , The Corrymeela Community http://www.corrymeela.org and with The Sustainable Peace Network based at Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Co. Wicklow, Ireland http://www.glencree.ie/ Our work in the SPN has included projects in Northern Ireland, Scotland, The Republic of Ireland, and South Africa.

Peacework South Africa: http://sustainpeacesa.blogspot.com

Peacework Palestine/Israel: www.sustainpeacepal.blogspot.com

Libraries will often use my stories in National Book Week, Story Walks and Local History Trails, working with Heritage Collections, or with the national collection at The British Library.

Language Learning

Working with child learners of English was my entry into the world of storytelling. I found that whenever I told a story (often with vocabulary and language structure 'unknown' to them) they were immediately engrossed, and language acquisition was much more rapid with those children who had stories than with those who didn't.

Libraries

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