How Ireland is harnessing the power of storytelling once again
Storytelling has long been used as a way to understand ourselves and bring communities together. Now, the Irish tradition is being revitalised by groups seeking new connection in a post-pandemic world, discovers Marie Kelly.
If you enjoy a good yarn, then storytelling events founder Jane Gormley has a few of her own. From being a skint, unemployed single mother age 24 living with her parents, to starting out as a young stenographer’s assistant at the High Court before finding her feet in recruitment and reaching director level at Dublin’s Code Institute, to marrying a farmer and raising two children with a 14-year age gap on an isolated farm on the outskirts of a remote county Kildare village, this 44-year-old knows a little of what makes for a resonating real-life tale.
Gormley says the secret to the rapid success of her social storytelling evenings, called Craicly, which she kicked off causally for a few friends in 2022, is that they rip the veneer off people’s apparently perfectly polished lives. “In telling a personal story – whether it’s funny or poignant – you reveal a human side of yourself,” she explains, “and audiences have a strong emotional response to this honesty and authenticity.”
It’s been said that storytelling is a gateway to truth-telling. At the very least, in one person’s story, others see fragments of themselves. Ciaran Gaffney, founder of Seanchóiche, a storytelling platform that began hosting events in Dublin more than two years ago and now reaches ten cities worldwide, agrees, and he reveals that the overriding sentiment guests express after attending a Seanchóiche evening is: “I’m not alone”. “The events inspire a sense of belonging and they offer a means of connecting that’s very special,” explains the 28-year-old.
It sounds like storytelling may be the new religion. Certainly, it unites generations, has a confessional element, loves ritual and fosters empathy and understanding. Storyteller, writer, performer and committee member of The Storytellers, an organisation founded to promote the art of storytelling in Ireland, Orla McGovern, doesn’t disagree. “I think there is something about the ritual and the community of these evenings; whether an old traditional tale is being told, a personal story or an improvised fable, there is a uniting of people in the same room, feeling the same emotions and connecting with each other. It’s powerful,” she explains. Gaffney concurs, although he puts it in more ecclesiastical terms: “Each speaker holds the audience in the palm of their hands, but the audience, too, holds that speaker in the palm of their hands.”
The Catholic church was once the bedrock of Irish communities, but its demise, compounded by the Covid pandemic, has led to a culture shift that’s made communal experiences and connection more difficult. Storyteller Tom O’Rahilly, who is director of the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin, describes our world now as “atomised” and explains: “There’s a reason why storytelling has been part of the process of maintaining community for thousands of years.” It not only brings people together, but, he says, “it creates context and meaning” for them. It’s no surprise then that both Craicly and Seanchóiche were born in the aftermath of two years of isolating lockdows and dirgeful social distancing. For Gormley, it was about creating some kind of shared experience that would give people the opportunity and incentive to get together at a time when socialising had become as alien as the pandemic when it first hit. “Covid caused an enormous change in our social patterns. I saw it among my own friendship group, but also among my parents’ and my teenage sons’. Technology began to replace fundamental human experiences, and while, in theory, it’s easier for us to connect these days, we actually experience very little of each other this way. I wanted my son to understand the enormous difference between connecting online and in real life,” she says.
The Greystones native was also looking for an artistic outlet, and as someone who loves hosting others and admits she could listen to people talk all day, a storytelling evening made sense. Her day job has also proved an unexpectedly good training ground. “Recruitment is all about connecting people and it’s very communications focused. I spend a lot of time encouraging people to feel confident about sharing something of themselves. Staging storytelling events requires the same skill set,” she explains. So she looked around the farm she shares with her husband Willy, son Paddy and daughter Clara; saw the open spaces, the rustic straw shed filled with golden woven bales and thought: “I can create something special here”.
Within weeks, 20 friends from different pockets of her life were enjoying comforting bowls of hearty homemade stew by candlelight and listening contentedly to five diverse tellers perform their stories around an outdoor fire. One woman revealed how her father’s job as an ornithologist had led the family to live on site at an Italian zoo when she was a child. At night, when the gates were closed to visitors, she and her sister would steal around the zoo on their bikes, conspiratorially gazing at the sleeping animals. Another – a farmer – told of the bare-handed, back-breaking work involved in trying to farm during the Big Freeze in 2010 when canals were frozen and pipes pumping water into fields burst.
You may arrive on your own and sit beside a stranger, but if the teller’s story resonates, then you and that stranger will inevitably turn to each other and connect over a shared memory or experience.
“I made a point of inviting people who didn’t know each other,” Gormley explains, “because it’s so difficult to meet new people these days. When you go to dinner or a show, you don’t get the opportunity to mingle. It’s not sociable enough.” The response to the evening was more than she could have imagined. “People told me they left feeling lighter and happier in themselves,” she reveals. “The evenings are intended to simply be sociable and fun,” she explains, “but they seem to have an almost therapeutic effect.”
Gaffney recalls experiencing this same desire to be in unfamiliar spaces with unfamiliar people after the intensity of Covid support bubbles. The Limerick native says the power and energy in the room during an event is palpable. “Prejudices are broken down. The space is filled with empathy,” he explains. A graduate of European Studies, Gaffney spent six years working in drinks marketing in Argentina, the US and The Netherlands. Storytelling, he discovered, is an extremely important part of any brand’s messaging and he saw its power to explain, persuade and entertain, but it was a spoken word event he attended for expats in Argentina that eventually inspired Seanchóiche.
“I was totally taken by the evening,” he recalls, “but I thought nothing more about it until a few years later when the country started opening up after Covid. The events industry was on its knees, people were looking for ways to reconnect in real life and I knew Dublin needed something unique.” Gaffney posted a message to his Instagram stories explaining he was planning a social night at which attendees could speak or spectate and suggested anyone interested send him their number. “I woke up to 60 numbers the next morning,” he laughs, still sounding somewhat astonished. “A friend had offered me her back garden as a venue, until I told her the numbers! I got in touch with The Fumbally Stables and they’ve been our main venue partner in Dublin ever since.”
Both Craicly and Seanchóiche events are now ticketed and last about three hours, with volunteer tellers submitting their stories in advance. Usually they’re anchored around a theme: Craicly’s upcoming event in Blessington is called ‘journeys & reflections’. Seanchóiche’s themes have included ‘change’, ‘childhood’ and ‘beginnings’ and in June, Gaffney hosted a Pride-themed evening in the illustrious surroundings of IMMA. Gormley, Gaffney and McGovern all agree that the venue is just as important as the stories. “It has to be inviting, to make people feel comfortable and at ease,” reveals McGovern. When she’s not hosting among the hay bales on her farm, Gormley loves to source exceptional private houses and gardens – places guests might not otherwise have the opportunity to visit. “There’s no established pattern of behaviour in these kinds of venues, so everybody is slightly unsure, but in an exciting way,” she explains.
Gaffney and Gormley say they’ve seen friendships formed and nurtured at their events. “You may arrive on your own and sit beside a stranger, but if the teller’s story resonates, then you and that stranger will inevitably turn to each other and connect over a shared memory or experience,” Gaffney says. But the phenomenon they’re most pleased about – and a little surprised by – is the manner in which storytelling has bridged the generational divide. Gormley fondly recalls an evening during which a 19-year-old young man stood up and relayed how his senior cup team had lost one of its most important games. He spoke so evocatively of the feeling in the changing room before and after that vital match that several septuagenarians chatted animatedly with him afterwards about their own experiences 50 years ago. Sport has always been a great leveller, but so too is storytelling it seems, allowing teller and listener to see each other more clearly and compassionately.
McGovern believes young people are actively seeking out new ways to connect away from their phones and she says she meets more and more who simply don’t want to be online all of the time. “I think they’re consciously looking for more meaningful interactions.” O’Rahilly agrees. “This meaning won’t be found in screens but in collaborative acts.” Perhaps they’re also looking for something of the light and shade inherent in real life; something they don’t receive on their homogenous Instagram feeds or TikTok reels. As writer Mia Couto once said, “We are made not from cells or from atoms. We are made from stories”, and these stories inevitably swing from comedy to tragedy to comitragedy and back again.
While our history of itinerant seanchaí roaming rural towns for a warm hearth from which to tell their spellbinding tales might suggest storytelling is a particularly Irish pastime, Gaffney says the art form is flourishing from New York to Melbourne. He says people everywhere are looking for places of comfort and creativity in which to connect. “Our overseas events began with the Irish diaspora telling stories, but now they’re dominated by first nation performers.” Over the past two and a half years, Seanchóiche has hosted 1,900 events at which 59 nationalities have shared their stories.
That’s some achievement, especially for a young man whose professor once told him that his European Studies qualification was a dinner party degree not a career path. “And now I essentially host parties for a living,” he laughs.
This article was originally published in the Sunday Independent Life, July 2024