Building bridges with Scottish International Storytelling Festival

It’s not difficult to see why Edinburgh was awarded the accolade of being the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature 20 years ago. If the Scottish Storytelling Centre were a person, it would, by now, be old enough to drink, and by the time of the centre’s opening, its forerunner, the Scottish International Storytelling Festival – nowadays based primarily in the centre’s Netherbow theatre – was already in its 17th year. 

In October 1989, when it began, the world was experiencing seismic change. The Berlin Wall – a physical manifestation of the 20th century’s cultural and political divisions – was to fall only a month later. A populace that had been split for decades was left to collectively figure out the steps to the tricky dance of reunification; a choreography that is still being reworked and renegotiated today. As part of SISF’s 35th edition, two storytellers are set to recollect their experiences of this time in West-East-West: Stories From a Still Divided Germany, presented by the Berlin-based Storytelling Arena and joined by Berlin-based Scottish storyteller Rachel Clarke.

A year after the collapse of the Wall, Wind of Change, the smash-hit single from the German rock band The Scorpions – told from the perspective of a citizen of the USSR navigating a collapsing regime – would become a cross-cultural anthem for the time. Today, it tops ‘song of the 20th century’ polls, its universal influence even prompting a rumour that that the song was in fact written by the CIA. Such is the power of music, of stories, to bring people together that still now, a single song is remembered to have played such a role in post-Cold War international relations that the band are still batting away accusations of American propagandist meddling.

If any nation would find this story unsurprising – knowing and appreciating that camaraderie is to be found in songs, ballads, and stories – it would be Scotland. Its communities have been formed and held together by the Ceilidh tradition for centuries, something which the festival’s head programmer Daniel Abercrombie says is at the forefront of the festival’s ethos. “If you're going to a ceilidh, traditionally,” he says, “you go to someone's house or [a] community space where there [is] food, drink, stories, music, poetry and dancing. Everyone's involved. It's a circular thing and you're encouraged to take part. That, I think, is the approach to the festival.”

Abercrombie cites what he says is an old Scottish Traveller proverb: “That it’s told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart. Which means it's two-way. The storyteller has to receive something back from their audience as well. The storyteller would always share a story, not tell a story. That sharing process means that you then go and share it with someone else, and it flows on from there.” The ripples of storytelling are in the empathy the stories create, the images and sentences that stay with you and open your mind up to new ways of seeing. 

Nowadays, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we’re more connected than ever. While that may have been true during 2020 and 2021’s COVID lockdowns, Abercrombie feels social media losing its lustre and notices his peers increasingly coming up for air. “People now maybe realise that that's one element of our daily existence. But there's an important other element that we had before and that we need to really cherish, which is the human connection.”

Following on from last year’s theme celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this year’s open call to artists requested work responding to the prompt ‘bridges between’. Mending Nets –  a collaboration between Scottish-Palestinian poet and dancer Nada Shawa and Scottish storyteller Janis Mackay – was selected from the callout to open the festival because it represents myriad ways to interpret the phrase, bridging borders, cultures, art forms and disability in one performance.

Mending Nets is the first time that both artists are working together, after 20 years of watching one another perform separately. The dance classes at which they first met were integral in allowing Shawa, who lives with cerebral palsy, to embrace the fluidity of her own movement. Were it not for the welcome she received from Janis and the rest of the attendees, she says, she would never have been able to reconsider the rigid, choreography-led nature of dance in favour of something more narrative-focused. 

Beautifully expressed in the festival’s programme notes, their bridge of friendship presents the simple and radical belief that telling stories from our lands can help us retrieve an unravelled sense of identity. “It is especially important in this climate of cultural tension that has really grown,” says Shawa. “Specifically, in terms of people who want to generally divide. We really are rejecting that. We are saying no, we are actually together. We are respecting each other and we're here.”

Elsewhere in the programme, the struggle for identity appears throughout the numerous events that draw on Scotland and Ireland’s respective folk texts and traditions and therefore from Gaelic. After centuries of neglect repression in both countries, musicians and storytellers are among the minority keeping Scottish and Irish Gaelic alive – and with them, the stories of our ancestors. These include Òran Mhòir, a multimedia performance from storyteller Eileen Budd and experimental folk duo Burd Ellen, as well as The Desperate Battle of the Birds, performed in English with Gaelic throughout by Scottish storyteller James MacDonald Reid and Korean musician Ryan Williams.

Of course, Scotland’s storied history isn’t just one of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. With Scotland, Slaver Nation and Kanpur: 1857! in the programme, this is something that the festival does not shy away from. The former will take place first as an online event and then in-person under the title Slaver Nation: Incredible but True, co-hosted by Kate Phillips, author of Bought and Sold: Scotland, Jamaica and Slavery which uses rare archive sources to give light to first-hand accounts of the trade. Joining her are Lorna Callery-Sithole and Donald Smith. In the latter, Niall Moorjani and Jon Oldfield present the story of a young Indian rebel answering to a British officer for the crimes of Kanpur.

Scotland is a country whose colonial ties to India are visible in the histories of both countries’ textile industries. Dundee is home to an award-winning museum on the city’s production of jute, a rough Indian fibre used to make burlap sacks, where its production was once primarily based. While the mills have since fallen, they once employed the majority of Dundee’s workforce. The whole story is one of greed and corruption from the ruling class in both countries. Telling the stories of the ones who fought back are Kirsten Milliken and Neel Debdutt Paul, in a performance titled Torn from the Same Cloth, directed by Peter Chand.

Residents of Dundee can learn more about the two nations’ ties during a Ceilidh upon the HMS Unicorn at South Victoria Dock, where Jeena Raghunath will join local storytellers to discuss how these stories ‘link us to the past, ground us in the present and help us to imagine the future’. The event is called Bridges of Stories: India & Scotland and is just one of the many instances in which the festival extends beyond its Edinburgh base to reach a nationwide audience of all ages. Its events are slated for Angus, Argyle, Dumfries & Galloway, Glasgow, Fife, and the North-East, Borders and Highlands – to name just a few. The programme –  beautifully illustrated by Morvern Graham –  gives full details of all locations, as well as a handy collection of family events across a double-page. 

“Walls can come down,” says Shawa. The fall of the Berlin Wall showed this, quite literally, to the world. “The [35 year] anniversary is poignant because it can inspire future walls to [fall].” And when they do, they give way to ways in which we can connect. Bridges between ways of life; between worlds. Abercombie feels that focusing on these, rather than our differences, is the root of storytelling. 

In the wake of an announcement from the Scottish government that funding for individual creators would be cut, and a backlash that forced them to thankfully renege, it wouldn’t be right to print these words without the acknowledgement that the money, space and time to make art is too seldom a bridge extended to those with stories to tell. And when it is, it can come with a plethora of caveats that censor or distort the tale. So long may the Scottish Storytelling Centre continue in providing a vital, impartial platform for voices to be heard.

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The Scottish International Storytelling Festival runs 18-31 October and is based out of the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Find the full programme at sisf.org.uk