Once the second edition of AEDA´s summer school is over with uplifting and exciting results, we get ready to work on the next project: FEST´S ANNUAL MEETING.
AEDA is a founding member of the European Storytelling Federation (FEST) and in just a few days from now, Fest´s annual meeting will take place. It will be at Kea Island Greece from July 19th to 22nd. A total of seventy six people will participate representing the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy , UK, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, South Korea, Turkey and Finland
AEDA´s and FEST´s history is tightly connected. For all of those of you that want to learn more about it you can do it here.
In 2001 the X Guadalajara´s Storytelling Marathon was celebrated under a very special theme: EUROPE. And in order to be able to bring storytellers from all over Europe a European grant was applied for and obtained. That was how, for the first time, storytellers from all over Europe came together to story tell and to talk about tales.
These meetings were also held in other sub-headquarters (the counterparts) of that very special edition of the Marathon (Beja in Portugal, Cologno Montese in Italy and La Maison du Conte in France). Experiences were shared, stories were told and multilingual telling was experimented. In this inspiring 3-day exchange there was talk about the possibility of a European Federation for storytelling, the soil was fertile and the seed of FEST was planted, although it would take some years before this seed would actually sprout.
To this day eight annual meetings have been held: 2008 in Oslo, Norway; 2009 in Lausanne, Switzerland; 2010 in England; 2011 in Toledo, Spain (organized by AEDA); 2012 in Alden Biesen, Belgium, this was symbolic because this year FEST became an international non-profit organization (INPO) with its base in Alden Biesen. The two past annual meetings were held in Rome (2013) with 90 participants, and in Sweden (2014). This year´s annual meeting will be held at Greece.
Since its creation the European Storytelling Federation is seeking to create a platform for the promotion of live oral storytelling in Europe. And strives to become a network through which associations and organizations in Europe will work together to promote traditions, languages and culture.
Its goals are to:
- Help raise the quality of storytelling in Europe;
- Encourage and support the professional development of storytellers;
- Welcome and support new generations of storytellers;
- Help improve the status of storytelling so that it is considered as an art form;
- Act as a centre for the sharing of information and skills throughout Europe;
- Allow members to meet, share ideas and network and to promote potential collaborations;
- Provide a link between European and non-European storytelling organizations;
- Act, in the long term, as an advisory structure in the field of storytelling for the European Institutions as well as UNESCO, and other relevant authorities and institutions.
You can learn more about FEST here.
AEDA´s Fest committee is formed by Charo Pita, Ana Cristina Herreros and Sonia Carmona, current spokesperson and AEDA´s representative in this year´s annual meeting.
We believe that FEST is important to AEDA because it allows us to get to know other proposals of storytelling throughout Europe, it allows us to have new experiences, to assimilate different ways of approaching storytelling, and, at the same time, it allows us to showcase the work and the situation of story tellers in Spain.
In this regard, AEDA feels that FEST is enriching for its members and, in general, for the storytelling movement in Spain. In fact, it is through FEST that AEDA is not only known outside the country, but also has a place in European Storytelling. But what really drives us to belong to this project is to be able to collaborate actively in the construction and consolidation of an International Network in which objectives, information and dreams are shared, and the possibilities of internationalization for the work of Spanish storytellers.
AEDA´s Fest committee
