Tampa-Hillsborough County
Storytelling Festival

FESTIVAL ALUMNI

For over twenty years, the Tampa-Hillsborough County Storytelling Festival has presented a unique cultural event which enables children and adults to participate in the ancient art of storytelling.

The Festival has its roots in storytelling competitions that began over fifty years ago in City of Tampa Recreation playgrounds. In 1980, Tampa Recreation and the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library collaborated to create the Tampa-Hillsborough County Storytelling Festival in order to provide children and their families with a city-wide forum which would recognize storytelling as an art form and provide outstanding national storytellers to be models who would inspire young people to excellence. The children were no longer competing in a contest but were striving to achieve Festival Quality status. Over the years a host of businesses and non-profit agencies have become staunch supporters of this Festival.

In 2000, the Homecoming 2000 Festival was a free, week-long celebration of storytelling. We celebrated stories that have been enjoyed for 50 years on Tampa playgrounds and for 20 years in Hillsborough County through a partnership between libraries, recreation centers and schools that has benefited both children and adults. The culmination of the week was the Twentieth Annual Tampa-Hillsborough County Storytelling Festival on April 15, 2000.

We hope you were able to attend this fun-filled family event. The Festival  featured nationally known and Grammy Award winning storyteller and musician David Holt, Twice Upon a Time (Festival Alumnae Kim Rivers and  musician Nancy Crockford) as well as local and regional professional tellers and hundreds of Festival Quality Youth Storytellers.

If you are a teacher, librarian, or youth leader and would like more information on how the children you work with can be part of this Festival next year, see the participant information, call our Festival Hotline at (813) 931-2106, or e-mail us at info@tampastory.org

NEXT FESTIVAL DATE:
Saturday, April 8, 2006

LOCATION:
Middleton High School
4801 22nd Street
(Between Hillsborough Avenue & Martin L. King Boulevard)
Tampa, FL

ADMISSION:
FREE

PRODUCED BY:
         Tampa-Hillsborough County Storytelling Festival Committee
Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System
City of Tampa Parks & Recreation Department
Creative Arts Theater
School District of Hillsborough County
Hillsborough County Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department

CONTACT:
info@tampastory.org

ALUMNI

Are you one of the thousands of tellers who have participated in the Festival over the years? If so, we are looking for you!  If you participated as a youth storyteller in Tampa area playgrounds and recreation centers since 1947 or in the Storytelling Festival since 1980 (or know someone who has), please contact us or call us at (813) 931-2106 to find out how you can help us celebrate. A few ways that you can help:

• Has storytelling influenced your life in some manner? Do you remember a particularly funny or poignant anecdote from your storytelling experience as a student teller? If so, we’d like to know! Perhaps as a youth storyteller at a Hillsborough County school or local city or county recreation center, you experienced your first taste of success. Maybe your school performance improved or you developed a life-long love for literature through storytelling. Have you remained involved with storytelling or some other art form? Perhaps, as an adult, you’ve felt encouraged to share stories with younger relatives or youth. Maybe you don’t remember the story you told but you have a definite memory of storytelling. Whatever impact this ancient art form may have had on you, please let us know!

• Be a Festival Volunteer!

• TO TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES WITH THE STORYTELLING FESTIVAL, CONTACT US.  PLEASE SPECIFY WHETHER OR NOT WE MAY USE YOUR ANECDOTE FOR FUTURE PUBLICITY.

Do you have a question?  Need more information?  Contact us at:  info@tampastory.org

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