This week is National Storytelling Week (26 January – 2 February) with plenty of events going on up and down the country to celebrate ‘the most ancient of communicative arts’.  So take a moment this week to think about and relish the art of storytelling. We may not be a novelist or a writer of any kind; we might not even aspire to be storytellers, and yet, perhaps without realising it, we all practice this art at some point (and more often than we think) in our lives. It’s the scary tale told around a camp fire that makes someone jump; the made-up adventure you might conjure up for a child when they demand “tell me a story”; it’s the way you tell your friends what happened to you that day, omitting details and embellishing others for extra effect, it’s telling a joke and getting the run-up to the punch-line and pitch just right…

Life requires all of us to be storytellers, but no doubt, some people are better at this art than others. It’s a common saying: “Everyone has a story in them” and I think this is true – but the way in which a story is told can make a mundane story great, and a great story mundane.

So here’s to National Storytelling Week, to the great storytellers around us, and to becoming someone who sees people light up in anticipation when we say: “Let me tell you a story…”

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager