Standing Other Stones

Scottish Book Trust, 55 High Street, EH1 1SR
Saturday 25th October 2008, 10am - 6pm

This one-day workshop at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival took a look at traditional stone worship and its modern manifestations.

Stones are pretty durable - they have been around for a good while. Yet despite their apparent hardness, they have been quietly absorbing a whole range of human behaviour over the years, some of it serious and enlightened, and some of it downright outrageous and crazy. Ordinary folk, drunkards, kings, gods and spirits have all devoted time and attention to these seemingly silent objects.

Everyone has the potential to develop a special relation to a stone of their own choosing, be it standing or lying, polished or rugged, urban or rural. Focusing on a selection of urban stones, the participants discovered alternative methods of storytelling relating to the worship of ancient stones and their contemporary alternatives.

There was an introduction to storytelling using both traditional and mediated techniques, also the parallels between social media technology use and animism were explored along with the relevance of stone-worship in our modern lives.

The Scottish storyteller David Campbell and Danish musician Goodiepal were there to offer expert advice before our fabulous participants took to the streets of Edinburgh to produce site-specific and performative stories, more on these to be posted here soon.

This workshop has been developed in remote collaboration between artists Andrew Paterson and Catriona Shaw with support from New Media Scotland.

To download a free copy of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival guide in PDF format click here.

agryfp.info
www.misslebomb.net
www.scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk