A HEARTFELT account of female homelessness and an exploration of Scotland’s historical witch hunts are both part of the Village Storytelling Festival which will return to Glasgow this summer.
Stories of new Glaswegians who have lost their homes, lives and countries but have made new connections will also be part of the five-day event in July.
New for 2022, the event will launch its Aurus Project, a toolkit created with international partners focusing on how to use the power of storytelling when working with marginalised or isolated communities.
Audiences at the Village Storytelling Festival will get to hear internationally acclaimed storytellers premiering their work in Scotland as well as brand new commissioned pieces. It will feature performances created by communities across Glasgow supported by The Village Storytelling Centre.
The festival will open with More Than A Footnote: A Quest To Restore Queer Stories, an explorative, narrative-driven performance by Lauren Bianchi, Colin White and Sarah Rankin, centred on reclaiming what has been stolen with regards to queer identity.
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Following on from similar themes of journey, the festival’s live performances will close with Raymond Wilson’s I Hope Your Flowers Bloom, an emotive insight into the dichotomy between nature, friendship, modern relationships and healthy masculinity.
Spanning the five days is Sarah Rankin and Daiva Ivanauskaite’s new online work, Connecting Stories: A Film, in which family and community are examined through the lens of Pollok in the context of pandemic childbirth and the integration of the youngest of an existing generation into a wildly unknown new environment.
The festival will end with a collaborative, family-friendly event in Pollok, where The Village Storytelling Centre is based. Free and un-ticketed, the Village Mini-Fest will include musicians, circus performers, face-painting, film-screenings, sports, crafting and storytelling.
Other festival events will be staged at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, SaltSpace Co-operative Gallery, St James Church and online.
The festival runs from July 5-10.
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