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    National Storytelling Network

www.storynet.org  

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North Central representative, Board of Directors, Judy Sima - EMAIL Judy (248) 644-3951

Michigan State Liaison, Yvonne Healy - EMAIL Yvonne (810) 225-2204

Tellabration!  Find a Teller   Conference    Festival    Benefits

from Karen Dietz, president of NSN Dec. 16, 2005 - reprinted here with permission.  Ask Karen Dietz for permission to reprint elsewhere.
1. Each year to our members we provide thousands of dollars in GRANT MONEY to fund storytelling projects around the country. We've funded classroom work, bussing children to storytelling festivals, storytelling programs in homeless shelters, etc. Go look at http://www.storynet.org/grant/winners.htm to see some of the wonderful projects we've already funded. We also fund applied storytelling projects through our Brimstone Grant. The Brimstone Grant is designed to produce models that will be available for all storytellers to use. It is vitally important that we nurture and develop new talent so every year we support an emerging storyteller through our J.J. Reneaux Grant.

2. In response to the devastating hurricanes this year, NSN set up two funds that people can donate to: a general Katrina Relief fund whose monies will be split evenly among storytellers affected by the hurricanes. The other fund is an Emergency Grant Fund (EGF). Any group/organization who wants to hire a storyteller whose livelihood has been wiped out by the hurricanes, can apply for a $250 grant to pay the performer. We just finalized the application and will be formally announced next week. I'm very proud that NSN is able to help storytellers in this way.

3. We provide a national CONFERENCE every year. Members and non-members can come together and network, share knowledge, build skills and address some of the deeper issues of the art form. It's the only chance to meet and get to know storytellers whom you may not interface with at local and regional conferences. Of course if you are a member, it is less expensive to attend. And if you are a member, you get first crack at the opportunity to present. Last year NSN marketed the conference to a variety of national associations. Hundreds of thousands of people across the US received information about our conference. Through this act alone, storytelling increased in visibility.

4. Beginning last year our conferences now include a FRINGE FESTIVAL. This is an incredible opportunity for storytellers to perform innovative work in front of their peers. This is one of the best and most exciting ways to bring innovation, creativity and new techniques into the art form.

5. Our conferences now make sure we have a STORYTELLING LEAVE-BEHIND PROJECT. We always go into a city and spend a lot of cash. But that is ephemeral. Now each conference will have a project that leaves behind a storytelling seed that hopefully increases the visibility and value of storytelling and that the local guilds and storytellers can reap the benefits of for many years.

6. New Publications:  This year we came out with a new BOOK, "Telling Stories to Children." This is a guidebook to help any storyteller who wants to improve their storytelling abilities with children. This year we are also producing the definitive GUIDES by Susan Klein on Emceeing and on Storytelling Ethics. The previous year we launched our first new BOOK in awhile, "A Beginner's Guide to Storytelling" to help those new to the art form. Contributors to both guides are NSN members. In 2006 Jossey-Bass publishers, a division of John Wiley (a huge publishing house) is publishing a BOOK on storytelling in organizations titled "Wake Me Up When the Data's Over: How Companies are Using Stories to Drive Results." All the contributors to this book are NSN members who work with organizational storytelling. Seventy national and international companies are part of the book. NSN is the sponsor and our logo is on the front cover, we have text on the back cover, and an entire page in the book telling people about NSN and storytelling. This is a trade book that will go on every bookstore shelf in the country. In addition, our board will be working on how to include more resources into our Marketplace that will help storytellers and the art form.

7. We have five Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and a number of discussion groups. The SIGs are the places (and sometimes the only places) where people from different professions and storytellers are coming together to share knowledge and establish practices in an area. For example, the Healing Story Alliance (HSA) SIG is incredibly active in the field of storytelling in the healing arts. The Youth & Educators Alliance (YES) SIG is also very active in their work of storytelling in the classroom and supporting youth storytelling. The SIO SIG has different models and lessons learned for doing story work in organizations that they share among their members.

8. I believe our MAGAZINE ("Storytelling Magazine") is very valuable. It is also very popular in schools and libraries. And yes, we are always seeking to improve its content and design. In addition, many of our SIGs HAVE PUBLICATIONS they offer. The Storytelling in Higher Education (SHE) SIG produces the first and only academic journal for storytelling studies called "Storytelling Self Society." NSN helped launch this journal, the SHE SIG edits it, and South Florida Atlantic Univ. publishes it.

9. Our New Voices discussion group is also very active. New Voices members are those 20-30 something-year-olds who are storytellers or keen on storytelling. It is wonderful that NSN has a place for this age group since most of us are starting to sprout grey hairs! There's an upcoming discussion with this group about how to bring in YOUNG ADULTS into storytelling and the art form - a very critical task that almost every association is grappling with. You can find our other discussion groups on our website.

10. Along these lines I am very proud that our board of directors now includes Kindra McGrane, a storyteller who is 24 years old. And that our board strives for DIVERSITY. If we are to appeal to the younger crowd and other populations, it starts with the make-up of the board. Kudos to them for their activities! NSN is a grassroots organization. It is NOT an organization of top down. All of the NSN board members are storytellers. They are storytellers of all types who want to make a difference in the national community.

11. Did you know that if you want to MARKET your products/services to the storytelling community that you can purchase from us our member list? And it is very reasonable. Another tool we developed last year was our Guild and Festival CD called "Storytelling in Our Communities." We update this CD once a year and it is a list of all the Guilds, state storytelling organizations, Festivals and regional conferences. All the contact information we could find is listed. Some we couldn't find. But once again, it is a tool storytellers can use to PROMOTE themselves or find local/regional resources.

12. Currently we are asking all NSN members to fill out on-line the STRUT YOUR STUFF database. We receive calls all the time asking for information about workshops, classes, newsletters, articles, and storytelling CDs/videos that are available. Many times we do not know the answers to these questions. So we are attempting to create a database of member's workshops, articles, newsletters, and products so we can help storytellers and others find the resources they need. That means if NSN has your material in this database, we can refer people to you and tell others about you.


13. We just launched our new on-line directory listings. Currently our website receives 350,000 hits a month. And it continues to increase. People looking to hire storytellers search our on-line directly constantly. NSN will be promoting our directory to other associations and state arts councils throughout the year.

14. NSN's AWARDS program is the only way storytellers and others are able to receive recognition from the national level for their contributions to storytelling. It's an incredible program and going through a process now to make it even stronger.

15. All NSN members, if they want to take storytelling classes at ETSU, receive in-state tuition. This program saves storytellers attending ETSU thousands of dollars.

16. To build are NSN Member grants program funding storytelling projects, we now produce NATIONAL STORY NIGHT on the Thurs. evening before the National Festival. This is a huge fundraiser for us because we would like to grow our grants program from $10,000/year to $50,000. National Story Night is to provide a storytelling activity for festival attendees waiting for the festival to begin on Friday, and to also provide a modestly priced venue for local residents to experience incredible storytelling (most local residents to do not attend the festival). This year was our first year and a wonderful success. Next year will be even better!

17. NYSS - The City of Pigeon Forge and NSN are partners for the National Youth Storytelling Showcase (NYSS) each year in Feb. This is a national program to promote youth storytelling. Each local school and state has the opportunity to foster storytelling in children. Through a series of events at the local and state levels, top talent is identified and brought to Pigeon Forge for the Showcase. Last year children from 11 states participated. NSN continually seeks to find opportunities to have the NYSS torchbearers and Grand Torchbearer perform as a way to support storytelling among youth and foster the next generation of storytellers.

18. NSN continues to promote Tellabration! Each year we provide updated materials and organizations producing a Tellabration! can register on our site so people can see who is participating. Then NSN collects reports and publishes the results. We now have a volunteer going through all the Tellabration archives, collecting all the material together, and putting it into a form where we can share it with everyone. Tellabration is one of the best storytelling advocacy tools we have available, and a marvelous way for storytelling groups to build their treasuries.

19. We are now on a regular monthly schedule of New Member Orientation conference calls. Any new member can join us, get introduced to others, and find out how to get the best out of their membership in NSN. Staff was just talking today about scheduling a monthly conference call for all members as a networking, Q&A and information sharing tool.

20. TECHNOLOGY - Yes, we continually seek ways to bring technology solutions into NSN. Our goal is to use technology to make us more efficient, faster and to better serve our members. We want to give power to the members instead of being a bureaucracy. And yes, doing so is fraught with bugs and glitches. That's because we operate on a shoe-string and do not have a lot of money to spend on technology, which can be very expensive. So we do things by hook and by crook. We have a part-time intern from the East TN State Univ. (ETSU) computer sciences department to help us out. A technology service vendor is there to fix our problems when we crash. My husband Tim, a software engineer, often gets pressed into volunteering in emergencies. He also does a great job helping us research different opportunities, options, vendors and technologies. Technology solutions rarely go smoothly (particularly on our budget!) but we continue to persevere. Our technology challenges this year are quite a long story (I'll spare you) and our members have been wonderful helping us correct errors and fix bugs.

21. STAFF - We have a small staff who is very dedicated to NSN. There is so much to do that working late or on weekends is not uncommon, yet never required unless it's the conference or festival. Now that's commitment! Two of our five staff members have master's degrees in storytelling from ETSU. They all love NSN and storytelling and are always there to help you.

22. NSN has a lot of activities and projects going on all the time. Membership dues account for roughly only 22% of our budget. The festival accounts for roughly 27%. Over 50% of our budget relies on other sources of revenue including donations. Given our budget, I think it is amazing all the benefits we are able to provide members and storytelling.

23. We also do/did the following: co-sponsored the Healing Through Storytelling conference in 2005; created compilation CDs preserving and making available some of the best stories from the National Storytelling Festival; have helped storytellers in need (Jackie Torrance and the Ray Hicks family) with special fundraising; we create and distribute online e-newsletters; we organize and support a network of state liaisons to provide local contacts for the welcoming of new storytellers and the collecting and dissemination of storytelling information nationwide; and as part of storytelling advocacy, we gather together and make available online a huge number of articles on the value of storytelling from the mainstream and academic press. This last is located at http://www.storynet-advocacy.org/news/, which is accessed by the somewhat cryptic link "Storytelling: It's News!" from www.storynet.org <http://www.storynet.org/> .

THINGS WE ARE WORKING ON TODAY:

1. Based on the member survey conducted in Jan-March 2005, we are now going through a process of matching our member's interests with all the products/services NSN provides. That way we will know if we are meeting the interests of our members and can then begin filling in any gaps. This will go a long way in serving members.

2. We are currently creating a theme index for our magazine, along with short descriptions of the guest editor section. Soon you'll be able to search the index on-line and purchase the material electronically. For example, if you are looking for all the Storytelling Magazine articles written about storytelling in the classroom, you'll be able to do a quick search, see the selections with a short description, and then purchase whichever articles you would like.

3. Overhauling the website. I've been itching to do this since the day I arrived. We are getting closer and closer to a complete re-design that will make our website much more attractive and easier to navigate.

4. Searching for additional benefits for NSN members. We are constantly evaluating different products and services we can incorporate into NSN for our members. For the last two years we've been doing research and educating ourselves about different opportunities. In the next few months we'll be looking at several proposals and I hope we find some programs that will help our members.

5. I wish you could see our walls in our office. Anytime a staff member has an idea about a benefit we can provide members, we grab a card and a pen and post the idea on our idea wall. As we work on these ideas, they move down the wall into the "In Process" section. As we finish them, they move into the "Completed" section. The same goes for our volunteer ideas/projects. Anytime you are in Jonesborough, please come visit us so you can see our walls and get to know our staff. We would love to visit with you!

6. Insurance, boilerplate information, ombudsman, press releases, promo material, and an electronic suggestion box have all been on our idea wall for awhile now, and we are slowly working our way through them. So stay tuned.

I could go on, but enough. NSN is only as great as our members make it. Please help us out make NSN and storytelling even stronger, more visible and more influential. Our staff keeps the day-to-day running. We add new projects on our plate as we can. Everyone works hard because we believe in the organization and storytelling so much.

Don't ever hesitate to give us a call. Tell us what's not working but also tell us what is working! Both kinds of information are very important. We want to know what's not working so we can improve. We want to know what is working so we continue to do it. And we hope you will participate in NSN as a way to make a difference in the world of storytelling.

Thank you.

Karen Dietz, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Storytelling Network
132 Boone Street, #5
Jonesborough, TN 37659
800-525-4514 or 423-913-8201
www.storynet.org <http://www.storynet.org/>
NSN - A world enriched through storytelling.
Mission -- Bringing together and nurturing individuals and organizations that use the power of storytelling in all its forms.

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Copyright 2004-2006 Yvonne Healy.   Permission granted to copy MI Story with credit to Editors.  All other rights reserved.