Leicester Guildhall
Like all good stories, the exact origins of the Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling is shrouded in mystery. Or, should I say, we can’t find an exact date when it came into being! What we can say is that The Guild was founded by Liza Watts in the first half of the 1990s and, just as Leicester is in the very heart of the country, Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling was soon at the heart of the national revival of traditional oral storytelling. By 1994 there was already a regular pub meet, Lies and Legends, at the Rainbow and Dove pub on Charles Street, and in the winter of 1995, at Leicester’s historic Guildhall, Liza carried a lighted, four-branched candle holder down the stairs from the Old Town Library and into a packed Great Hall for a evening of storytelling called ‘Magical Women’. This was to be the very first event in 12 years of fabulous storytelling at Leicester Guildhall. Events which bought storytellers from as far and wide as New Zealand, India and the USA and from heritages as diverse as Australian Aboriginal to Roma traveller. Major movers and shakers in the UKs storytelling revival, Ben Haggarty, Sally Pomme Clayton and Hugh Lupton, together ‘The Band of Storytellers’, were also regular tellers at The Guildhall and great supporters of the Leicestershire Guild.
In 2013, published by The History Press, Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling went into print with ‘Leicestershire and Rutland Folk Tales’ which featured stories from Guild stalwarts, Liza Watts, Terry and Jill Jobson and Mike and Kath Chalk. Perhaps that was the culmination of those very fruitful years? Perhaps, the Guild had had its heyday? For a while, and for reasons too complicated to elucidate here, things did go a little quiet. The Guild continued to meet on alternate months at The Friends Meeting House but numbers had become sparse. Then, in early 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic struck and, with everyone locked in their homes, it looked like the Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling might become one of the many casualties of the virus. But you can’t keep a good story or a good storyteller down and, in April 2022, the Guild rose like a phoenix from the ashes and with a new venue at Leicester Central Library and a new brand, ‘The Story Tree’, we are ready and set to put storytelling back, centre stage in Leicester.
Central Library
Since April 2022, The Story Tree has gone from strength to strength running a well-attended, free monthly club night at Leicester Central library and performing 2 Halloween specials in ’22 and ’23. We are now looking to the future and our plans for 2024, which include our club night, new performances at The Guildhall and storytelling workshops, are well underway. See our Events and Story Tree pages for details. Members of the Guild are available for storytelling at your event, fees are negotiable and we can usually work to a theme. Contact us for more information
Sadly, Liza Watts, Terry and Jill Jobson are no longer with us but we thank them for conceiving and starting the Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling and we hope they would be proud of what we are doing now.