Dr Alastair K. Daniel - storyteller, consultant and independent scholar

A lovely way to spend an evening at the Dover Fringe Festival, telling smuggling tales at the Wine Bar in a small (but perfectly formed) performance space filled with people ready to join-in with the stories and songs.

This afternoon, I led an online CPD (Continuing Professional Development) session for The Professional Teaching Institute. In ‘From the tongue to the page: oral storytelling and the writing process’, I highlighted the role of oral storytelling in how learners make sense of the world around them and presented a process-model of storytelling.

This model emphasises storytelling’s potential for playful experimentation, developing narrative competence and instilling linguistic confidence, with teachers and learners co-creating stories (whether versions of traditional tales or original stories). Storytelling, in this process-model, becomes a pedagogical tool that has applications throughout the writing process and across age–phases. As illustrations of classroom storytelling, I drew on my work with wordless picture-books, telling stories from Shakespeare’s plays and my own dialogic approach to storytelling with learners.

I am grateful to the PTI for the invitation, to the large online group who participated (despite the limitations of Zoom), and for the feedback:

- A great engaging session - Alastair was clearly very knowledgeable and has given me some really interesting points to think about with regards to oracy and storytelling.
- Alastair was very knowledgeable and easy to listen to. He had inspiring ideas and shared good resources.
- Alastair was so engaging and full of energy. He has inspired me to try out many of the ideas that he shared. Thank you.
- Incredible inspiration, full of ideas to bring to the classroom
- Brilliant and insightful session. Lots of idea[s] to try that will be easy to implement. Think I will have a go with bringing Shakespeare to EYFS!

This morning, I led a webinar for students and staff at the İstanbul Aydin University on how I adapted The Hound of the Baskervilles for storytelling in schools (and to reflect on my process of adaptaion in the light of relevant theory).

In order to illustrate my approach to The Hound of the Baskervilles, I included some video extracts from nearly 25 years ago - one of which I share here (yes, my hair is bleached and, yes, I was thinner). I still occasionally perform Hound, and it's good to reflect that the adaptation must have worked well in schools as the show has hardly changed in all those years (apart from the colour of my hair and my waist size).

Preparing for the webinar meant returning to theory that I haven’t reflected upon for quite a few years, and it was enjoyable to exercise the little grey cells in this way and critique the choices I made in adapting Hound for performance.

When I was in Belgium in March, I spent a few days filming a new pupptry and storytelling video with master puppeteer - and friend - Paul Contryn. Making these videos (this is our fourth) gives us the opportunity to work together and explore how we can blend our disciplines, something we hope to be able to do with a live audience sometime in the future.

This year, we are delighted that talented musician and composer Paul Cooper-James (under whose baton, I first performed - in Godspell - over 40 years ago) has composed and arranged music for the film, bringing a new dimension to the story-making.

You can see the film here:

The Blue Jackal - A Panchatantra tale This is the fourth collaboration between storyteller Alastair K Daniel and master puppeteer Paul Contryn. The Blue Jackel is the first of these films to have...

Today is The Bard’s birthday and this week I have been into a local primary school to introduce the children to Shakespeare. I have been taking Shakespeare’s stories into schools for over 25 years in a hybrid performance style which is a mixture of storytelling and enacting (with the children taking on key roles), and I am never disappointed by the reactions of learners, no matter how young, to complex language and ideas.

Yesterday, I was telling ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ with very enthusiastic 4-6 and 6-8 year olds. The telling with the 4 - 6 year old children provided a particularly joyful moment: with two of the children in-role as Titania and Bottom, Titania said (with me leading) to the ass-headed Bottom as he sang, 'My ear is much enamoured of thy note'. I asked the children in the audience what Titania meant when she used those words - 'It means she likes his song' came the answer from a small person.

On Monday, I worked with the 8-11 year olds telling ‘Macbeth’ and leading workshops. During the story, various messages arrive to help drive the action, and I give these messages as letters for children to read in-role. Each of these letters has the message in both Shakespeare’s original language and in modern English, and I invite the children to make their own choice. When I started doing this work, primary school children almost always chose modern English, but this changed around 2008 (the effect, I suspect, of the Speaking and Listening initiatives in schools at the time); on Monday every child chose to use Shakespeare’s language. Towards the end of the story, a child who is a struggling reader wanted to be a messenger, and the class teacher and I were thrilled for him that he was determined (with support) to deliver Shakespeare’s original words, and he did so with confidence and clarity.

I am looking forward to heading down into my homeland for stories and songs of Kent and Sussex smuggling at as part of Dover Fringe Festival on 15 May:

Events from 10 May, 2025 – 17 May, 2025 – Dover Fringe Festival When the Gentlemen Go By: Stories and Songs of South Coast Smuggling 15 May @ 19:00 - 20:00 Vinoteq 1 Cannon Street, Dover, Kent, United Kingdom Join performance storyteller Alastair K Daniel in a journey through song and story round the coast of Kent and Sussex in the lawless golden age of smugglin...

It is wonderful to be back at Thomas More Flanders (thank you Vanessa Docx for the invitation), learning about the work of international colleagues and sharing some of the work that I have been doing.

Day 2 of Book Week, and a little closer to home than yesterday. After continuing to explore critical literacy with the younger children this morning, I introduced the Key Stage 2 children to one of my favourite Jewish tales, 'The Sages of Chelm'.

Through this story of wise-fools seeking to purchase a reliable and continuous full Moon for their city, the children embedded the specific terminology into their own tellings of the tale - creating sequential connections between the phases of the Moon.