​This wasn't planned. I had been telling stories as part of my work for many years before it began to dawn on me that I might actually be 'a storyteller'.

 

My professional background is in archaeology and heritage management. Post-graduation I worked as an independent field archaeologist before joining the management team at the county Museum of Somerset in Taunton. From there, I eventually moved to the Quantock Hills National Landscape in the role of Historic Heritage Officer. Quite unexpectedly, however, storytelling proved to be a continuous thread throughout these roles.

At the Museum of Somerset, for example, I could often be found dressed in a faintly ridiculous costume, telling folk tales and historic stories, or leading ghost tours of the medieval castle which houses the museum collection. To my surprise, I quickly found myself enjoying this part of the job far more than my 'proper' work of running a museum. So much so that, in 2016 I launched Haunted Histories, creating a programme of events including storywalks of rural locations such as Sedgemoor Battlefield and Dowsborough Hillfort. This was followed by The Ghosts of Christmas Past, an atmospheric one-man show, exploring the history of the Victorian ghost story tradition, through the sharing of lost Somerset tales of the supernatural.

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In 2020, I returned, so I thought, to the serious business of heritage management when I joined the Quantock Landscape Partnership Scheme, a £2.5million project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, running from 2020 to 2025. BLABBERMOUTH, however, is born directly from my work with the scheme, which was hailed as an exemplar in public heritage and community outreach, successful in reaching traditionally 'hard-to-reach' communities. Local folklore, myths and legends played a substantial role in these successes, forming the basis of numerous community events and activities. These events demonstrated the huge potential of traditional storytelling in reconnecting people with their local environment and nature more broadly, bringing demonstrable mental health and well-being benefits. Traditional stories were also used to help engender a sense of place and identity, providing a useful way of exploring and celebrating increasing cultural diversity in a largely rural part of Britain to which multiculturalism is a relatively new and sometimes challenging phenomenon.

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Alongside traditional storytelling events, BLABBERMOUTH aims to build on these successes and to further explore the role of storytelling as a means of strengthening the resilience of local communities.

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