Settle Stories

Settle Stories

Founded	2010 by Sita Brand
Registration no.	1141649
Focus	Storytelling, Oral history
Location	Settle, England
Coordinates	54°04′07″N 2°16′35″W / 54.068670°N 2.276310°W / 54.068670; -2.276310
Area served	Yorkshire
Website	www.settlestories.org.uk

Settle Stories is a registered charity and company founded in 2010 by Sita Brand to promote the power of storytelling for individuals, communities and organisations. The charity seeks to change your world through the use of story:

Run a regular storytelling festival and related events.
Management and development of the W R Mitchell oral history archive.
Development of a learning programme for schools, business, organisations and individuals.
Promotion of the social, economic and personal benefits of storytelling to the wider public.

History

In 2010, Sita Brand, a performance storyteller, theatre director, writer, and producer, established Settle Stories in Settle, a small market town in North Yorkshire. Brand proposed a storytelling festival for the town and set about obtaining funding for her idea. Her aims were:

To increase access to traditional and modern forms of storytelling.
To improve the storytelling skills of users.
To increase the availability of, access to, and diversity of stories and storytelling.

At the core of the initiative was a belief by Brand in the power of storytelling to help people learn and communicate universal truths. Brand believes that stories ignite the imagination in ways that help people to listen, learn, make emotional connections with ideas and effectively communicate with others. She also saw the festival as a way of contributing to the economic development of the market town.

Funding was obtained from the Arts Council England, with additional contributions from Craven District Council, Settle Town Council. The first Settle Stories Storytelling Festival was successfully launched in 2010, involving professional storytellers, musicians and other artists. Over 500 people attended, with a similar number of local children taking part in schools-based workshops.

Following the success of the 2010 festival, Settle Stories became a registered charity (registered charity no.1141649). Subsequent festivals in each of the following years saw a steady increase in visitors, with over 1,000 attending the 2013 event.

In June 2011, Settle Stories established the W R Mitchell Archive, which is a unique collection of audio and visual recordings of life in the North West of England, particularly the Yorkshire Dales. The charity is now in the process of digitising the material and making it available as a resource for learning (see below).

In August 2012, the charity obtained an office in Settle Town Hall. It has one full-time staff member (Sita Brand) but employs others, including performers at the festivals, on a freelance and consultative basis. It has a team of trustees and volunteers, and its Patron is Mike Harding, a well-known Yorkshire author, broadcaster, performer and storyteller.

By 2013, Settle Stories had involved the following stakeholders in its work:

Local community: including children and young people, families, and schools.
Visitors: including those specifically drawn to the Festival, and visitors to the region, drawn to the Dales, and attending the Festival as part of their visit.
Artists: storytellers, musicians, visual artists and other performers at the annual festival.
Local Businesses: hotels and guest houses, restaurants and shops.
Volunteers: who willingly give their time and expertise to support the aims of the charity.
Suppliers: supplying materials for the Festival and other Settle Stories activities.
Funders: Arts Council, Craven District Council, Settle Town Council, Trusts and Foundations, commercial sponsors and individuals.

W R Mitchell Archive

The W R Mitchell Archive is a unique collection of oral history recordings, photographs and other materials collected by Dr W R Mitchell over a 60-year period to record the history of Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire.

Dr Mitchell is a journalist, historian, and author of over 100 books and articles on the Dales. He joined The Dalesman magazine in 1948 and was its editor from 1968–88. From the 1980s onward, Bill toured the region recording on cassette tape the memories of local people on a wide range of topics, but particularly the everyday experiences of people, as remembered and told by Dales people in their own words and dialects. In 1996, in recognition of his work, he was awarded the MBE and was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Bradford.

By 2010, Dr Mitchell had amassed a collection of over 300 audio tapes, with an accompanying collection of photographs and some video footage, of his interviewees.

In January 2012, Settle Stories received a £50,000 Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for a pilot project to digitise a selection of cassette tapes and make the recordings available online. The current site can be found at http://www.wrmitchellarchive.org.uk/

Settle Stories is committed to preserving the history contained within these resources and making it more accessible, particularly to a younger generation. In that respect, it is committed to delivering a learning and education programme in schools, bringing the archive to life for school pupils.

External links

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Settle Stories

History

W R Mitchell Archive

External links

1. Settle Stories (Background)

2. Settle Stories Storytelling Festival

3. W R Mitchell Archives