Storytellers gather for a group photograph in Cuba.
profession-outlining that it requires special education and training; delivers a specific service to individuals and communities from which the entire nation then benefits; and continues to accrue in value, requiring regular, renewed investment by the storytellers in order to remain current.
Currently, all performers in Cuba are certified in their given disciplines. Certification of actors includes their training in storytelling. The present campaign, however, is for certification of storytellers as discrete and separate from certification as actors.
We were given a glimpse of the application of storytelling to community development in Marianao at the Proyecto Akokan. Here, the community was allowed to repurpose a disused stadium into a community centre for training in the arts and a variety of community development interventions, including reclamation of their traditional religions.
During the festival, a new community space was opened. At the centre of this space is a tree renamed El Arbol de Las Palabras (Tree of Words), marked as a space for storytelling. Jamaica was given the honour inaugurating the tree, and the first story told at that tree was “Ananse and The Wisdom Calabash”.
Now we need, once again, to run with something for which the world not just salutes us, but is waiting to be instructed by us: the teaching of storytelling as a profession and a tool for empowering individuals and building communities.
We thank the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport for facilitating our participation in the Primavera Festival and anticipate the deliberate facilitation of storytelling in the realisation of Goal #1 in Vision 2030, “authentic and transformational culture”.