The Cape Clear Island International Story Telling Festival in West Cork will celebrate its 30th year with a line-up of international storytellers, music and workshops from August 30 to September.
It is a major event on the southernmost offshore island of Ireland, originally founded in 1994 by two American emigres who wanted to "keep the tradition of storytelling alive."
The founders were husband-and-wife Chuck and Nell Kruger who made the "rationally absurd, essential decision" to move full-time to Oilean Chleire from Zurich, where they were teachers,
Cape Clear Island International Story Telling Festival founders were husband-and-wife Chuck and Nell Kruger
"We wondered how we could put ourselves and the heritage of the island to appropriate use. We fantasised about organising a small animal zoo on our farm, then a craft centre, finally a festival, an international storytelling festival," said Chuck, who I knew as a contributor to my then RTE Radio programme, Seascapes. He also became a noted, prizewinning author. "Wizened fishermen and farmers told me stories about the telling of stories, but the storytellers, they said, were all gone, the very tradition of storytelling gone," he said.
From the couples initiative came the storytelling festival and, though they left Cape and their homestead on the eastern side of South Harbour, in 2017, to return to the USA to be near family, the festival has continued to grow and develop.
This year it will start with 'Storyswap A HAon' on Friday. August 30, at 2 p.m. in Club Chleire at North Harbour, Cape Clear.
More information here
