The Secret Life of the Folktale online course with Shonaleigh & Simon

The House of the West Wind: College of Storytelling is delighted to share this online course, an enquiry into the nature of story.

Like pebbles worn by the sea into shapes of startling wonder, the folktales we all know are the legacy of centuries of slow growth, and generations of work and vision, by some of the greatest storytellers who have ever lived.

Most of the time we do not even know their names. Usually we never think about how they gave their tales the form in which we know them best today. But in the story of this long creative process, unexplored treasures and mysteries lie hidden as if in plain view. Familiar tales take unfamiliar shapes; chicanery, sheer genius, charlatanism, and chance all play a part in shaping and handing on the stories.

In this five-part course, writer and storyteller Simon Heywood and Shonaleigh, storyteller in the Jewish women's Drut'syla tradition, will take a practical, creative, and inspiring look at the hidden stories of the tales we think we all know.

This course is open to anyone interested in traditional stories, whatever your background.

There will be five sessions, all live on Zoom at 7.30pm UK time (GMT): November 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th, and December 7th.