Sheila Arnold doesn’t just tell stories; she lives them. As a professional historical character interpreter, Ms. Sheila takes on the role of historical characters and tells stories through their eyes. She has also written poems, stories, fiction, and plays, starting when she was in the seventh grade. With a life seeped in storytelling, Sheila enthralls her audience of students of all ages with her character portrayals, motivational speeches, workshops, and storytelling.
I have attended every Festival, and have worked on the committee, in some capacity, for 28 of its 29 years. If you’re doing something for that long, you better have a really good reason—or two.
Blending traditional mountain folklore with music and the contemporary Appalachia, Adam Booth’s approach to storytelling tickles the funny bone and tugs at heart strings.
Bill Harley is more than just a storyteller. He’s a two-time Grammy award-winning artist, musician, author, playwright, and, yes, a storyteller too. His weapon of choice is humor (don’t worry, it’s a weapon for good), and with a knack for engaging both the young and the old, Bill is one teller you won’t want to miss at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to experience professional storytelling (as in the oral tradition of storytelling; J.J. Abrams doesn’t count here), the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival has everything you love about your favorite movie, book, cave painting, etc., and puts it into the heart and mind of the audience.
When did you first catch the storytelling bug? Can you remember the first time you were charmed as a professional teller spun a captivating tale? For more than 154,000 Utah students, their first taste of the storyteller’s art has happened in their very own school.
We are a storytelling people. Humans have been doing it since the dawn of time, and while there are plenty of other storytelling mediums around these days, oral storytelling is seeped in history, tradition, and the ability to captivate the listener in a way no other medium can.
Each school year began with a trip to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, and now retired after nearly 40 years, this award-winning teacher tells us how she first became a fan of the festival and how she used her experience to create memorable teaching and learning moments in the classroom.
In the stories that we tell and the stories we seek out we can look for truth as well as hope.
“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, Who are you building out of the story in your head?
The key to making any lesson go from interesting to memorable is a story. A carefully chosen, well-timed story can help a student understand and remember the lesson, and – more importantly- understand how to apply the lesson to their lives. Researchers have found that a human brain can retain more information if it is given in story form then if it is given through a list. . .
Paul Stout is a Utah businessman who appreciates the value of a good story. He has been attending the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival with his family since its inception at the Ashton's home in Orem over 20 years ago.
When I first heard about storytelling, I assumed it was all just glorified children's stories. But the art of storytelling is so much deeper than that.
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