East Anglian Storytelling Festival

24^th June 2024
Festival time in Stowmarket!

Stowmarket residents were bemused recently to spot dragons heading across Asda car park.  It was all part of the vibrant celebration of music, traditional culture and stories that is the East Anglian Storytelling Festival, which has taken place in the historic grounds of the Stowmarket Food Museum for a third successful year.

With a strong community theme, the festival attracted a larger audience from ever before from Stowmarket and beyond.  The sun shone on families enjoying puppets, morris dancers, face painting and a chance to help build a festival dragon.

In the evenings, adults were enthralled by amazing performances, funny, dark, thought-provoking but always magical.

Highlights included a storyteller’s supper, where guests sampled the food featured in the stories: a story trail exploring the ancient buildings of the Museum in the company of some of our finest local storytellers: and a coffee stall where every cup came with a story, heard through headphones in the sunlit glade.  Festival regular Martin Manasse describes the festival as ‘wonderfully hospitable: I am surrounded by people who love to tell and listen for the sheer joy of it.’

Thanks to grant-funding from Arts Council England and mid-Suffolk district council, the festival team were able to take stories into the community: children from local schools performed their own stories in the Tithe Barn: local VI groups heard stories from storyteller Tony Finn, who has never let his lack of sight stop him telling stories.  And traveller-heritage writer Dan Allum worked with the festival’s theatre school to help children devise a theatre show based round the Museum’s display of traveller caravans.

Stowmarket mayor Terence Carter commented: ‘It’s a wonderful event, it’s community-orientated, it’s great for families.’

The festival team are already working on next year’s festival, from 30^th May to 1^st June 2025, during the summer half-term, which will have an environmental theme,  Marion Leeper from the festival is looking forward to working closely with the Food Museum: ‘We are so lucky to be welcomed into the Museum’s amazing grounds, and we’ll be reflecting their passion for the land and the local area in our stories and story adventures.  We hope next year will have an even bigger crowd, more stories and even more fun.’

Details: The East Anglian Storytelling Festival

https://eastanglianstorytellingfestival.co.uk

The Food Museum https://foodmuseum.org.uk