Saturday May 12

CAT WEATHERILL and Our Stories – a real-life storytelling workshop!!

In November last year, Cat Weatherill came to Swindon Central Library and introduced us to the idea of telling stories from our own lives.

Subsequently, Cat ran two storytelling workshops in the Library, animating the Reading Room with great ideas and good guidance.

This workshop is for storytellers who now want to prepare their stories for a public telling, at this Festival!

THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD with Gareth P Jones and Steve May.

Are you quite young, a little bit older, or even older? Do you like going to a lively event in a theatre, with your family and friends? Do you like stories? Do you like telling, writing, or hearing stories? Have you ever written or told a story?

Well, if you have answered yes to any or all of these questions, then this is an event for you! Today is your chance to listen to stories and help tell and write the ‘greatest’ story never told. Come and have fun, be entertained, engaged, and help make a brilliant story! Suitable for anyone, children or grownups, of any age, who likes stories.

Award-winning writers and illustrators for children, Gareth and Steve, have come to Swindon to work together, on stage, on a story. Not just any story either. They want to write The Greatest Story Never Told. They’ve got some music, some pencils, and some paper, but no ideas. Try as they might, they’ve got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Diddly squat. They need your help! Please!

Gareth P Jones, author of Ninja Meerkats, The Thornthwaite Inheritance, and Death or Ice Cream?, brings his music, books, and storytelling to Swindon via other fabulous festivals and the Lyric Theatre.

Steve May has worked with Gareth on illustrated books Beards from Outer Space, and Cheese from Dimension Pong.

SWINDON SLAM! – hosted with charm and good cheer by Sara-Jane Arbury, aided and abetted by Steve Rooney, and applauded and enjoyed by YOU!

Welcome to the twenty-second Swindon Slam! – an opportunity for poets of any age, experience, or pedigree to take their gaze off the page and do it on stage; to share their verve and verse with a supportive and appreciative audience; to seize their moment to stanza and deliver!

This is what happens. Poets who want to have a go, apply to enter as soon as possible. Numbers of competitors is limited – numbers of applaudience is not! On the night, competing poets are called up on stage to perform for three minutes each. From then on, it’s a knockout! Kindly judges, chosen from the kindly audience, decide who inspires and who expires. But whatever their fate, all competitors can expect a rush of adrenalin, roars of applause, chunks of chocolate, and showers of flowers. Everyone is a winner and gets a prize, even if it’s only a choccy haiku. But only one poet becomes the twenty-second Swindon Slam champion and carries off the bubbly-filled trophy.

If you want to compete, email: sjarbury@gmail.com or phone 07814 830031.

Hosting proceedings, and juggling judgements with wit, wisdom, and whistle, will be svelte, intro-writing mistressy mic madam Sara-Jane Arbury; and likeably laid back, selfless, and smouldering Steve Rooney.