Once upon a time, there was a man who worked in a museum. He wasn't an education officer, a gallery assistant or a curator. He didn't even help out in the cafe.
This man wandered among the wondrous objects spinning fabulous tales. He talked of monsters, mysteries and remarkable happenings. This man was the museum's resident storyteller.
Ben Haggarty, a leading storyteller, has worked extensively with museums, including a week-long residency at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.
Told he could choose any room to work in, Haggarty opted for a gallery of glass cabinets containing rather dull-looking Chinese porcelain - not an obvious platform for exciting tales. But to Haggarty, the bowls were brimming over with stories.
"I'd see a whole series of characters - the Eight Immortals - fools who travelled around the world in a flying ship," he says. "Once I asked a class of eight year olds: 'What do you see in this?' 'Plates and pots,' they said.
"Then I told the story of the Eight Immortals - and then told them to go and look at the gallery again. 'Ah! There's the old man who can fly and fart and turn lobsters red!' They were appreciating the details of the artefacts. That's what storytelling in museums is about," says Haggarty.
Storytellers reach places in a visitor's imagination that other methods of interpretation simply don't reach. "Professional storytellers bring to the exhibition intangible heritage - things like stories, myths, fantasies, legends. All this stuff which infuses culture and from which, in many museums, most of the art is derived," says Haggarty.
"In places like the National Gallery you have to have storytelling; most of the art is based on myth and the Bible. A storyteller is contextualising an image or artefact so that someone can understand it. They will then look at the object in a completely new way."
Jane Cockcroft, events manager and former education officer at the Handel House Museum in London, believes museums haven't taken up all the opportunities offered by storytelling. "The potential of storytelling isn't always explored fully," she says.
Cockcroft first used storytelling when she worked at the Theatre Museum. "Stories are at the heart of theatre and performance, so it seemed an obvious thing to do," she says.
"We set up storytelling workshops - family drop-in sessions - looking at why we tell stories. So when I came to Handel House in 2003 as education officer, I had storytelling in mind. I wanted to apply it to a musical context."
First, she set up a series called The Magic Opera, telling the stories of the operas, and employed Haggarty as the storyteller. "You stop seeing Handel as a dead white man in a wig. He becomes human. He becomes real," says Cockcroft.
The sessions were hugely successful, but expensive. Since then, she's developed a storytelling schools project. "Baroque music - there's a cultural barrier there. Storytelling is a good way of finding a way into a classical music project. It's a great way of engaging a puzzled kind of kid," Cockcroft says.
"For example, a professional storyteller told the story of George I commissioning Handel's Water Music as a fairy story and didn't give the kids any facts. She told the story of a man coming to a foreign place and meeting the king, hoping to find favour with him. After that, she got the students to tell her who the person was and what the city was. They told her the story. It worked extremely well."
Multiple stories
In order for stories to flourish, museum staff need to recognise that their own narratives aren't the only version of events. Rachel Smillie is Glasgow's storytelling development officer, the first position of its kind in the country, and director of the Village Storytelling Centre in Pollok where she has trained museum staff, including learning assistants and curators.
"We trained the learning assistants to use story more, to become confident in not just telling a story to people, but creating stories themselves. Most loved it, but some of the curators said you should never say anything that isn't factually correct about the object. It would be good to encourage a different approach," she says.
Many museums see story sessions as opportunities to attract multigenerational audiences. Haggarty, for example, has produced an adult-only story, The Amorous Adventures of Krishna.
"The museums in Glasgow are looking to develop a family audience," says Smillie. "Through storytelling and activities around it they can see that could be a very good way to do that. It brings families in."
The strength of stories as an interpretation tool is that they're as adaptable as the teller, so can be aimed at any age. "A storyteller is an improviser. I can tell the same story to 30 four-year-olds on a mat on the floor and to four 30-year-olds, but the nuances will be utterly different," says Haggarty.
For Sue Latimer, senior education and access curator at Glasgow Museums, storytelling is embedded in all aspects of the museum interpretation, from the text at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to live interpretation at the Transport Museum in Glasgow. "It's a way of communicating. By using a narrative you're engaging with people," she says.
Context and connections
But the power of the story and the role of the storyteller aren't always appreciated. Haggarty warns against replacing professional storytellers with education assistants.
"Everyone can tell a story, but they don't have those professional skills," he says. "In the museum world, the role of the storyteller is not really understood. We get asked if we wear costumes."
He says storytellers are independent artists, not educational add-ons. "If you employ an artist in your museum, you give them artistic freedom. But storytellers aren't recognised as artists in that way."
And, although this is the National Year of Reading, which will include storytelling events throughout the country, storytellers themselves are keen to emphasise that they're not just an adjunct to a literacy campaign.
"There's a huge misconception that literacy and storytelling are the same thing. Storytelling in museums has nothing to do with reading or writing," Haggarty stresses. "In order to learn to write you have to first learn to speak. It's pre-literacy."
Storytelling has to be in context and make a connection to work. "If it's used very carefully it can be very effective. But it shouldn't be used just for the sake of it," says Cockcroft.
"I remember seeing some storytelling in a ruined castle owned by English Heritage. The stories had absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the castle or to do with the period when it was built.
"I thought, why am I here, listening to random stories in an amazing building? There is no point using stories unless there is a relationship. Unless there's a connection - don't bother."
In Telling Tales: A Guide to Developing Effective Storytelling Programmes for Museums produced by MLA London, Jack Lohman, the director of the Museum of London, writes, "Storytelling is at the heart of what many museums do. They use stories to breathe life into their collections, making connections with different times, often different continents, cultures and beliefs, capturing a range of emotions. Listening to these stimulates and nourishes the imagination, helping to learn about oneself as well as about others."
A national conference on storytelling in museums is being organised for later this year. Haggarty says: "My aim is the curator who reads this will say that this is a chance to work with artists on sharing our collection. A museum is a very creative place for storytelling to work."
Dea Birkett is the director of Kids in Museums, www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
This man wandered among the wondrous objects spinning fabulous tales. He talked of monsters, mysteries and remarkable happenings. This man was the museum's resident storyteller.
Ben Haggarty, a leading storyteller, has worked extensively with museums, including a week-long residency at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.
Told he could choose any room to work in, Haggarty opted for a gallery of glass cabinets containing rather dull-looking Chinese porcelain - not an obvious platform for exciting tales. But to Haggarty, the bowls were brimming over with stories.
"I'd see a whole series of characters - the Eight Immortals - fools who travelled around the world in a flying ship," he says. "Once I asked a class of eight year olds: 'What do you see in this?' 'Plates and pots,' they said.
"Then I told the story of the Eight Immortals - and then told them to go and look at the gallery again. 'Ah! There's the old man who can fly and fart and turn lobsters red!' They were appreciating the details of the artefacts. That's what storytelling in museums is about," says Haggarty.
Storytellers reach places in a visitor's imagination that other methods of interpretation simply don't reach. "Professional storytellers bring to the exhibition intangible heritage - things like stories, myths, fantasies, legends. All this stuff which infuses culture and from which, in many museums, most of the art is derived," says Haggarty.
"In places like the National Gallery you have to have storytelling; most of the art is based on myth and the Bible. A storyteller is contextualising an image or artefact so that someone can understand it. They will then look at the object in a completely new way."
Jane Cockcroft, events manager and former education officer at the Handel House Museum in London, believes museums haven't taken up all the opportunities offered by storytelling. "The potential of storytelling isn't always explored fully," she says.
Cockcroft first used storytelling when she worked at the Theatre Museum. "Stories are at the heart of theatre and performance, so it seemed an obvious thing to do," she says.
"We set up storytelling workshops - family drop-in sessions - looking at why we tell stories. So when I came to Handel House in 2003 as education officer, I had storytelling in mind. I wanted to apply it to a musical context."
First, she set up a series called The Magic Opera, telling the stories of the operas, and employed Haggarty as the storyteller. "You stop seeing Handel as a dead white man in a wig. He becomes human. He becomes real," says Cockcroft.
The sessions were hugely successful, but expensive. Since then, she's developed a storytelling schools project. "Baroque music - there's a cultural barrier there. Storytelling is a good way of finding a way into a classical music project. It's a great way of engaging a puzzled kind of kid," Cockcroft says.
"For example, a professional storyteller told the story of George I commissioning Handel's Water Music as a fairy story and didn't give the kids any facts. She told the story of a man coming to a foreign place and meeting the king, hoping to find favour with him. After that, she got the students to tell her who the person was and what the city was. They told her the story. It worked extremely well."
Multiple stories
In order for stories to flourish, museum staff need to recognise that their own narratives aren't the only version of events. Rachel Smillie is Glasgow's storytelling development officer, the first position of its kind in the country, and director of the Village Storytelling Centre in Pollok where she has trained museum staff, including learning assistants and curators.
"We trained the learning assistants to use story more, to become confident in not just telling a story to people, but creating stories themselves. Most loved it, but some of the curators said you should never say anything that isn't factually correct about the object. It would be good to encourage a different approach," she says.
Many museums see story sessions as opportunities to attract multigenerational audiences. Haggarty, for example, has produced an adult-only story, The Amorous Adventures of Krishna.
"The museums in Glasgow are looking to develop a family audience," says Smillie. "Through storytelling and activities around it they can see that could be a very good way to do that. It brings families in."
The strength of stories as an interpretation tool is that they're as adaptable as the teller, so can be aimed at any age. "A storyteller is an improviser. I can tell the same story to 30 four-year-olds on a mat on the floor and to four 30-year-olds, but the nuances will be utterly different," says Haggarty.
For Sue Latimer, senior education and access curator at Glasgow Museums, storytelling is embedded in all aspects of the museum interpretation, from the text at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to live interpretation at the Transport Museum in Glasgow. "It's a way of communicating. By using a narrative you're engaging with people," she says.
Context and connections
But the power of the story and the role of the storyteller aren't always appreciated. Haggarty warns against replacing professional storytellers with education assistants.
"Everyone can tell a story, but they don't have those professional skills," he says. "In the museum world, the role of the storyteller is not really understood. We get asked if we wear costumes."
He says storytellers are independent artists, not educational add-ons. "If you employ an artist in your museum, you give them artistic freedom. But storytellers aren't recognised as artists in that way."
And, although this is the National Year of Reading, which will include storytelling events throughout the country, storytellers themselves are keen to emphasise that they're not just an adjunct to a literacy campaign.
"There's a huge misconception that literacy and storytelling are the same thing. Storytelling in museums has nothing to do with reading or writing," Haggarty stresses. "In order to learn to write you have to first learn to speak. It's pre-literacy."
Storytelling has to be in context and make a connection to work. "If it's used very carefully it can be very effective. But it shouldn't be used just for the sake of it," says Cockcroft.
"I remember seeing some storytelling in a ruined castle owned by English Heritage. The stories had absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the castle or to do with the period when it was built.
"I thought, why am I here, listening to random stories in an amazing building? There is no point using stories unless there is a relationship. Unless there's a connection - don't bother."
In Telling Tales: A Guide to Developing Effective Storytelling Programmes for Museums produced by MLA London, Jack Lohman, the director of the Museum of London, writes, "Storytelling is at the heart of what many museums do. They use stories to breathe life into their collections, making connections with different times, often different continents, cultures and beliefs, capturing a range of emotions. Listening to these stimulates and nourishes the imagination, helping to learn about oneself as well as about others."
A national conference on storytelling in museums is being organised for later this year. Haggarty says: "My aim is the curator who reads this will say that this is a chance to work with artists on sharing our collection. A museum is a very creative place for storytelling to work."
Dea Birkett is the director of Kids in Museums, www.kidsinmuseums.org.uk
