16 Danyah Miller on how nature in story helps young children imagine new worlds

I’m sitting with the award-winning oral storyteller and author, Danyah Miller, in her West Sussex garden to hear about “swimming in the sea of story.” Danyah tells of vision and method – how story works best and what we might do to create story. She’s the first person to sing on the podcast, showing how young children can come to see how beautiful is the world. “Sharing stories in the seasons opens up a connection with the natural environment.” Personification is key too: speak of Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Brother Wind, Friend Robin, the Standing People. Story works slantwise to create inner courage and new paths. Danyah says, “I have no idea where each seed of story will go.”

Danyah also says, “I go to a place when time stops, when I’m telling a story.”

Danyah recent book is “Seven Secrets of Spontaneous Storytelling” (Hawthorn Press). 

Her hero is local suffragette Madge (Ethel Margartet) Turner: “I can’t get her out of my mind.”

She recommends the book, “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911): “a challenging book, yet it’s also how nature can inspire us.”

Her action: share a story with children. Then repeat. “You can’t water the rose only once.”

Danyah’s YouTube channel is at https://www.youtube.com/@danyahmillerthestoryteller.

Danya’s website is at: https://danyahmillerstoryteller.co.uk/ 

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It's a real pleasure to be with Danny Miller, sitting in the uh outside in West Sussex at your home. Um, storyteller, author, performer a lot as well. So that that link between story as a written thing and then as an oral thing to connect with audiences. I think we'll be talking a bit about that. And also early years. So thank you for inviting me to your home, Tania, and it's a real pleasure to have you on the pod. Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here with you. Great. Um, I thought we we could just start by opening it straight up with you know story and what it can do, because that's your expertise, is story as a big thing, it's part of human culture forever, just about. Um, what can story do in our contemporary age? What have you been doing with this thing called story?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Yeah, so it's that's a huge question, isn't it? It's sort of huge and tiny, because uh as humans we are storytelling beings and we swim in the sea of story, don't we? We make sense of the world through story. And if I start a story and then stop halfway through, your brain will immediately go to try and finish the story. And I think that's where gossip comes from. It's rather lovely, isn't it? That that we have half a story and then we go, oh yeah, and I think what happened then was uh so the audience is contributing already.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

That's a good story, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Exactly, exactly. And um and story and performance obviously needs a structure and an arc that's satisfying. Story in life can go in all sorts of different directions, and and within story we have jeopardy, don't we? We have that place where we don't really know what's going to happen to the hero or the antagonist or what what have you. And and that's the same with our lives. We we're at a new beginning each and every day that we start. It's a new story. We're we're beginning something at the same time as having a thread of story that runs through our entire lives. So I think I I think that's really quite lovely, you know, that we can start anew with our story. But in in terms of early years and in terms of sharing stories with them, oral storytelling, you know, predates um all of our written word. And by a long way. Absolutely, thousands of years, and and auracy is so important, it's key. And I particularly think, although it's it it's always been important, maybe it is particularly urgent now in our polarized world where we can pull apart because we have one story and we believe it, and we don't necessarily want to hear the other person's point of view. And I think that's really sad but also very damaging to us as humans, because actually we want to connect with others, we want to have that human connection, don't we? And in a very fast-paced world, I think some of our connection is is missing, is is getting lost. So storytelling can bring us back, it can bring us back home to ourselves, it can help us to empathize, to understand, to imagine. We can imagine a better world.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

And that would have been the starting point for all stories, sitting around a fire or the hearth at the end of the day, telling stories, children's faces upturned, wide-eyed, listening to story. Um and as you say, the story of our lives is one of no rehearsal for the big things that are going to happen. Yes. Except through someone else telling us what it might be like. Yes. In other words, through story.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Through story, and and that's it, isn't it? That sitting around that campfire, around that hearth, um, it helps us. It it it would have been used to protect us, to give us those those stories that are um warning stories, you know. Um don't eat that plant or watch out for that animal. Exactly. And then this is what happened to us historically, and therefore you can understand where we are, and therefore where we might be able to go, and to then put into context, you know, so so these stories have uh helped us to understand our cultural place within a tribe or a community uh and our anchor us in that place. So, in early years, for me, bringing it right here and now, we have this beautiful and amazing uh world. Nature is the most fascinating and beautiful thing, isn't it? So we've got buttercups on the lawn, and a three or four-year-old will only have seen those buttercups come up once, twice. They won't remember them when they're earlier, and putting the buttercup underneath their chin. You know, do you like butter because you've got this lovely shining? How amazing is that? We don't have to take them very far to be able to share beautiful stories. The dandelion, which is now considered a weed, wasn't. You know, the dandelion was a revered plant for its healing properties, for its beauty. So you can take people to that place that actually, when you have dandelions in your garden, um the roots aerate the soil. And we know that they taste good, they taste like the sun if you put them in salad.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, Daniel Annemurdock. Oh, I love Dandeland.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

So for me, sharing stories with young children of the season in the season opens up a connection with the earth and with Mother Earth, with with our natural environment really, really well.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So Story is doing that kind of that lift, that heft of providing, opening children's eyes up, um saying, look a bit at this thing that you saw yesterday in a different way, but now you might see it differently today because you're going to pick up the flower, or some might say, Oh, that's just a weed, and you say, well, it depends on how you look at it. Yes. So you're opening you're opening up that kind of attentiveness, I think, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

I think that's right. Um, but to do it through story, so it isn't didactic and and it isn't through facts, but sitting, if you like, on the earth and singing a song, you know, can you see the butterfly? See it gaily flutter by, and you know, drawing the child in, and and then they start looking for the butterfly or um the little snail, little snail, little snail, and then they go out searching for the little and and then what you do is you start to um show those tiny children um how friendly the world is, how beautiful the world is, how uh we are connected. Even if you're living in a big, big city, these dandelions are pushing up all the time. And the the legend of the dandelion is that the fairies were asked to come and tell us which was their favourite flower. And the fairies went round all the flowers, and you can tell it, you know, they went to the rose, and the rose was majestic and smelt beautiful and um was always displayed in the biggest, grandest gardens, and it went to the iris who was blah blah blah blah. Um, but the dandelion, the dandelion pushed up on street corners, in the parks, in crevices. The dandelion was always where the children were. Yeah? And the dandelion, said the fairies, is the children's flower, and that's why it's our favourite. So, you know, and then you see things differently, don't you? And you have this awe and wonder. And awe and wonder really help to protect our heart, help us to um feel compassion, to feel love, to take care of each other. So if we're seeding these things for young children, those things will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

So we're doing a couple of really interesting things there. One is that thing about compassion goes back to your point about how story um can connect people from very different circumstances. It might be political views, it might be cultural views, or just they haven't met before. So you're looking for a connection, you're looking for the circle and the bit that overlaps between people. Yes. That has to be worked at, and story does a little bit of that by changing the way that people see the world, or indeed see people around them. I mean, if you're telling a story, directly telling a story, then people, children are seeing the world differently and seeing people differently.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

That's absolutely right. And and if you've got a group of children and you call them, you know, little children, you know, who will come into my small ring and make it a little bit bigger? And then you get them in, and then you say, just make way for your friend. If you will make way for your friend. And they may not have met that person before, but suddenly the word, these words are really important. Mother Earth gives the child a very different perspective than say, you know, just go and sit on the grass, or um grandmother moon. Yeah? This personification. Yes. So when the child then has a connection with the world in that really visceral way, in that way that just goes into their storytelling experience without us explaining it to them, then as they get older, they want to look after and take care of their friend. So by the time they get to that teenager, we don't want them to be apathetic and say, there's nothing I can do, I don't, you know, I don't care about it, it it's all messed up anyway. What can I do? What can I do? Yes, if if they know that Brother Wind, yeah, our standing brothers and sisters the trees, if they've understood that and in in a way that isn't intellectual but just deeply unknowing, then there are things that we do. There are things that we do for our friend Robin. Yes. For our for us spiders. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Um and if we think of trees, as you say, as the standing people, we might be less casual when we think about, well, we're gonna chop them down because they're in the way of this. Yes. They don't allow cars to come down the road, or they might drop their leaves and make a mess. Yeah. Then you can quite quickly see how that personification is changing the way that we see the world.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

And how we act. Yes. So you know, um old Willow has protected all of these um little fairies and gnomes and children, and the children have run in and out of um old Willow. And then Old Willow is a friend, is is a protector. Yes. Rather than, as you say, somebody who's in the way, something that can just be discarded. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

For a tree, you you would have, you know, it doesn't take us very uh long to find 200, 400, 600-year-old trees in our landscape, and some a thousand or a couple of thousand years old if they're the use of the landscape. Extraordinary. And that's a lot of deep time that you can also get people thinking the thinking differently about time just by saying it's a really, really old tree. Yeah. It's in a lot of the world. Yes. It's in children run past here 200 years ago, 400 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

And then, so that's absolutely right, but then weave the story into it of that tiny little seed that grew and the rain came down and the sun shone, and then you tell it as a story and it's profound. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

It's interesting how um we've have we become too dominant in in our current era with explanation and exposition. Um I speak a you know, speak as a kind of trained scientist to begin with, which is all about finding stuff out, analyzing it, resolving it to kind of small cores of truth in various ways, and talking about those and stripping out the emotion. Um that's not story. I mean, that does a different kind of thing. Um in you know, that's that that tells us about maybe the way the world works, the way it's bolted together, the way things change. Um, but to create an emotional connection, you've got to do something much more like you're talking about. So there's the there's an emotional core to it as well, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02 14:02

I think there is. Um connecting to our feelings, particularly when we're younger, is really important, isn't it? Maybe, yeah, maybe it's important all the time, but to help that um connection to feelings early on, then then we always have access to them. But I I love the idea though that um children I think are pure scientists, right? They pick something up and they drop it. And uh we get cross with them. It's like, you know, they throw something out of the pram and we're cross. You know, stop throwing it out of the pram. They don't know about gravity, they they've never heard of this law, right? And then we get cross with them, but what they hear, I think, is is us really engaging with them passionately. You know, stop doing that. Which gives them such glee. So they then throw it out again because they got they got two reactions. One reaction was it dropped to the floor, how did it do that? And then the other reaction is ours. We pick it back up, we put it in the in the thing, and we look at them. So even though for us, as a parent or or as a you know, uh uh an adult, we might be really telling them off. But I don't think we should be, because that's science. This is if you just strip away everything, that's what you're looking for all the time, aren't you? As a scientist, you're looking for not knowing.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

And and so I'm not really answering your question, but I love this idea that children are just pure science, scientists.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

I mean, we're going to go to the soil behind us here and you know, uh pick it up and taste it. Yes. Dig it. Dig it. Tit your fingers. Taste it. Um smell it. Yes. Do all those things that that we forget to do as adults, but actually that that you know, smelling the smelling soil after the rain has fallen. Yes. You know, what a smell in summer. What what kind of memories that brings back.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Isn't it beautiful? And and and those memories we can then weave into our stories. So if we use our imagination, which obviously the more we use it, the stronger it becomes. It's a bit like a muscle. If we stop using our imaginations, then it becomes weaker, but still there. All we have to do is exercise it. And then we use our senses, not just our sight, but what something smells like or tastes like or or um you know what the touch of it is, and we weave that into story, and then what we use is our memory, uh remembering that little stream that we played in when we were kids, or climbing that tree and getting stuck halfway up and going, oh, I can't get down that fear, uh, you know, I can't go up, I can't go down. How am I going to do this? Um, these are really, really brilliant to weave into stories to make them very real. But for little children, we don't want too much jeopardy, you know. We want them to be able to go out into the world and back again and feel like the world is safe. I think that's our first job in storytelling when children are little, is to really help them to see the joy of life. So we talk about Jack Frost, watch out, watch out, Jack Frost is about. Um, and then they go out and crunch in the snow, sadly, not so much now down here, but that that really enlivens their imaginations and their play. And we know play is essential.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Yes. So are you talking kind of under under fives, under sevens uh age groups? I know there's not a strict number that works for this, but but when you say small children, it's it's children who are going out into the world a bit but still turning back to seek security and support and and kind of inner confidence so that you can go out again when you're in the I think they quite often call it the second age of childhood, is like six to ten when you start running around and going out into the world and falling over and scratching your knees and doing all that kind of stuff and coming back.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

And you've we could get all sorts of different stories from that as well. That first bit is something different that it's it's about noticing, as you've said. But also just seeing things differently as you've described.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yes, or just seeing it for the first time, as I said, you know, that um we've seen buttercups over and over again, so we can walk on them and trample on them, you know. Whereas what if you go out and lie with a child or with children and um and see them as little dancing individuals, you know, and yes, we might pick them and take them back to the classroom or to home, but with respect, you know, um so what we're doing is we're modelling, but we're doing it through story, through wonder, and and and through that investigation, but always always through metaphor, simile, and creating this language for them that allows them then to bring that into their literacy, into their learning, uh, into their expanding world. So I'm not saying we have to um you know sort of soft coat everything, but I am saying that there is a place for us to really, really be gentle and soft. So I'm not naturally a quiet, introverted person. But when I'm with younger children, that quietness is in balance to their um boisterous and ebullient nature. So that's a lovely balance. Whereas when they're older and getting to teenage and maybe a bit cynical and a bit weary, and everything's going on in their bodies, isn't it? It's all upside down and inside out, it's terrible, you know, anxieties and stuff. Then I think we need to be more passionate and more emboldened. We want to say, it's okay, we can get through this. I'm strong enough to hold you during this time. Yes, yes. So for me, I think sometimes we get it the wrong way around, you know. When we're when we have young children, we get very, very bright um educators, don't we, who are gorgeous. But we need them when the young people are a bit older. We need we need that optimism. Yes. Um a bit further up the educational scale as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Daisy Jones, as well as, you know, putting stitching daisies together and wearing them around in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Oh, they were lovely, weren't they?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

I'm doing the thing. I'm going, I'm going back in. So you're describing those actually, probably first memories that you're creating with very small children, saying, Here's the buttercup, see it this way. That's that's almost a first memory. Um later on, the things that happen are then become kind of keys to unlock memories from the past, and they and then they pop up, you know, someone says something, or you see something, you think, or you just as you described, you think, oh yes. You know, that that makes me think of that occasion. I haven't thought about that for a long time. Yeah, so how lovely.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

So, for example, um, I um I used to sing songs and lullaby lullabies all the time, because obviously those are our first stories. The songs, the nursery rhymes are our first stories. The rhythm absolutely, the cadence, all of those things, yes. And Um so I I sang three or four or five lullabies after a story at the end of my children's um day. And when we had lockdown, uh my daughter was having real difficulty sleeping. I mean, real difficulty. I think she was in a lot of pain physically one night, and she came in and she was in her late teens, and uh she'd come back home and she was in her bed, and I sat down by the side of the bed, and everything in me wanted to sing a lullaby, and everything in me was also going, nah, she's gonna push you away, she's gonna say, What are you doing? But I just thought, you know what, it's my gut instinct, and I was just stroking her head, and I began to sing this lullaby, and I heard really quickly her breath changing, and then she started to go into sleep, and that emboldened me, and I sang another lullaby, and before that has ended, she was asleep, and I think we forget the power of that. So I could have held back going, oh, don't be stupid, you know, she's not three anymore, she doesn't want this, but it was the repetition of that as a child and the place that I believe it must have taken her to that allowed that to happen. And one of the lullabies that I sing is one that was sung to me. So this passing down of story.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

How lovely.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Um, in one of the other podcasts, I spoke to Mandy Haggis, who lives in Asint, right in the northwest of Scotland, and she's a poet working on climate and a range of other things. And she she says, first can't make it worse. And there is something there about kind of just just giving the language a go, giving it a try. Um, and that's a beautiful description of what how you've kind of been able to use uh the lullaby to change the circumstances. Yes. If I can put it that way. I mean perhaps change the person. But there's something about story is has a um if it has the feeling and the emotional connection, it will change people.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

And you've described that a couple of times.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah, and that then changes action, doesn't it? So it's that thing of if what we have when children are very little is a connection to their surroundings, to Mother Earth, to the planet on which we stand. Um and we do that by degrees, so first just their own little patch and their own environment, and then that goes out. Then we do have a chance of using that connection to help us in the future to make different choices. So I I will teach three or four very simple techniques. So when I first have a group of adults, and I prefer to be teaching the adults because that means that that teacher or that librarian or that parent, whatever, um, will affect more and more and more and more children. So if you've got a teacher who's going to be in education for 25 years, how many people will they touch? Whereas I can only go into a, you know, three classes of 30. So I would much rather share these skills and these techniques. So for me, we are innate storytellers, right? We can all do it. What we need is confidence, and then what we need are a few techniques. And those techniques I can share quite simply, and they people will often say to me, um, there's no way I'm going to be able to take that story and put the book down. And by the end of our training session, they are sharing that story easily, effortlessly, with their colleagues and then taking it into the classroom. It is quite a simple shift, but they do need just a few supporting techniques. Teachers, librarians, I always say to them, they already know most of this stuff. All I'm doing is reordering it for them and getting them to rummage in their skill set and bring it up to the top and go, this can make your life easier.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yeah. Um is it is it partly because um you go in with uh, you know, you've been doing storytelling for all your life, and people know that. Um, and by lifting the veil on technique and method, you're you're giving a little bit of kind of secret source to people. You're saying here's something, you're not saying it's secret because you're giving it away, but people don't know it until you've told them here's how to do it. Yes, and that makes and suddenly people go, oh, well maybe so confidence. You mentioned confidence comes.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Absolutely. Nine times out of ten, confidence is the first and last skill anyone has to learn. Yeah? Just believing that they are capable of it. And and that, you know, that's something that we can pass on to others, and I, you know, I would love to say to people, you can do it, you can do it. And yes, we have an innate ability, we have a skill, and then we can put that together and and create the magic.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Can you share some of those some of those met those techniques or methods? A couple of things that you would say to people. I know they'll be much more detailed and you've got to work through them, but are there are there a couple of things that you would say this is how you get from sort of a little bit unconfident or or reading the written thing or writing a written thing, and then going to the point where you stand up without notes or sit with notes and tell your story. So that's that's something that's quite a journey to go on, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

It is a journey, and and I don't want to do it a disservice. Um, but for example, what I was saying earlier is if you're making up a story, then imagination, the senses, and memory are three really important. They're they're my first in my book, they're my first three secrets, right? And so the first thing I would say is if you're making up a story, then don't imagine that you have to make it up, just listen. Right? So we can hear now an aeroplane. So let your mind go to that. There was an aeroplane, and it was going across the sky, and the wind began to blow, and as it blew, the aeroplane began to spiral, and it was spinning and twisting, like one of those oak um twisters. Yes, yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Or like the buzzard that we just saw flying above us here turning around.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Yeah, so you take what you've what you've what you're hearing, what you're seeing, what you're smelling, use that, or take an object, you know, this this um this glass. Or this, you know, you think actually that this is a microphone. But actually, it's a really important detecting device to find all the seeds in this grass. And as you take it with you, it's able to speak to the seeds, so the seeds can blah blah blah. Okay, so you use what you've got and then use your memory. What can you remember? So you were talking about uh early memories of buttercups and weave that in. Yeah? So you're using all three of those things, and then you have your audience, which is your child, and you say, and what's the name of the person in the aeroplane? And they go, Sammy. It's Sammy. Yeah, and what was Sammy doing in the aeroplane? Well, Sammy was trying to find um King Cloud. Yes, yeah, and there, and a dragon on a hill, absolutely. So using those three, just listening and trusting, and it it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, when we tell a story that's bonkers, um the children go, oh, I can do this. And then they start to make up stories.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, yes, exactly. Um and that that kind of putting in the senses as a direct link to memory, memory. I mean, kind of smelling something opens up memories, hearing birds, yeah, feeling the wind on your skin, those kind of direct sensory uh interventions in our kind of normal, busy lives as a starting point. And you feed that into the story, then it becomes easier to remember it if you're the person telling the story. So you've you want to kind of pull up those things that have meaning for you. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

And and they're and they then really speak to that story. But you can do a taste test, right? So put out a tiny cube of apple, a little bit of cheese, a little bit of lemon, yeah, a chive or a piece of mint, and then um do it before your meal, right? Blindfold the whole family, and one person holds the tray, and then you pick up something and taste it. Yeah? And then let it start the story. And then the next person picks something else up, or you offer them something, and they carry on the story. So you do a blindfold story. You know, it's just just play. Just play. And and I think the most important thing, other than confidence, is time. Carve out a little bit of time, it only needs to be five minutes. But what you'll be doing is planting seeds that last a lifetime, that your child will say, I remember that what we did after supper every night, or before supper every night, was we told stories. Yes. And you're building that link, that trust, that love, and that connection so that when later on, as inevitably these things do, our relationships can break down a bit, we can get cross, we can fall out, we can do that is that beautiful link that just reminds us of the love that we feel for each other. And when we do that, you know, what do they say? Um every journey starts with one step. If if we can find more love and heart and peace in our heart, maybe we can then find that place in our environment. We can be more loving and more kind and generous around us.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Beautifully put. Uh how do you feel when you've been performing? So you perform, as you mentioned, in lots of different ways. I mean, to with young children in festivals with lots of lots of audience who are not quite sure what they're going to get, or maybe some people know exactly what they're gonna get, but every audience is different, isn't it? I mean, every single one of them. Yeah. Um how how do you feel when you've been telling stories? So I definitely I mean I can guess, but I can hear it in your voice. Yeah. Um tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

I just I go to a place where time stops when I've when I'm telling stories. Um and it's a triangle between the story, me, and the audience, and in the middle of that is the alchemy. And so before I go on stage, before I do it, um I ask to serve the story. I ask that whatever this story has to give to the audience, that I ask that it lands in that way. And that and it's the same thing as I was saying before, my job is to be the conduit for that story, and then I have to trust that where it lands in different ways, in different places, in different, you know, is the way it should land for that person, even when I make big mistakes. And then afterwards, well, normally I either beat myself up, I could have done this, I could have done that, I could have done, or I just am on a high. You know, because it's like that just worked. So what I try to do now is rather than criticize myself, is what I call muse. Hmm. That I really liked. This I could do differently. This I, you know, so I try to I love going through it, so my poor family have to listen to me. Going over it and through it and round it, and describing what happened here.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

I love story. Yes, lovely. Yeah, I think that there's something about being that idea of just musing is is quite an important method, perhaps, that um every gig or event or whatever we want to call it is is different. Um and sometimes it goes fantastic, everything connects, and sometimes they're just fine. Uh and occasionally something kind of happens where it throws it right off. Yeah. And you are probably going to remember that one for a long time. Yeah. Or a re a review. Yeah, oh yes, exactly. You know, that review that you go, oh, we're gonna remember that one forever. And you do, sadly. Um there's something um about uh noting, acknowledging and noting the things that didn't work so you can learn from them and get better. There's there's that.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

But enjoying that sense of everything stopping. I think that's a lovely thought actually, because it strikes me you're describing a way of getting into slow time in a in a busy world. Modern world is busier, there's more intrusion in lots of ways. Yeah. So we actually have to work to get out of that. Yes. Um, if you sit in the forest for the night and sit round the fire, then that's slow time. Yeah, you know, um, you're not going to get the same intrusions that we would get elsewhere.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

And stories take us to that place. Yeah, yeah. There's um I teach um presentation and communication skills, and I have um for people who get worried about presenting uh an acronym which is CARM. And the C is for centering, so you breath. Curiosity, right? Be curious about the other. And then A, which is action, yeah, speak, add what you want to add.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Put your body in it.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Yes, and and um really be present and then ask. So it might be again curiosity, what do you think? How do you yeah, and then land, make sure you land it.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Let the story come.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Come it, yeah, bring it down to land, allow people to take it in. I ask um teachers never to get the children to clap when I've done a when I've done something, because what happens is the story's going in, in, in, in, they clap, and it all comes out again.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

So I just ask, please don't clap, you know, just let it land. And then M is musing afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Right, lovely, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Yeah, calm.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Um uh in the pod we ask a few kind of common questions just to finish off about uh what you're what you're proud of achieving, maybe against the odds, um, because you've described story as a kind of journey there. Um its place is to help people on journeys, is to set them off, to take that first step. Uh life is full of big surprises, uh, big transformational moments that we've got no practice for. Scary stuff very often.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Um so they I don't mean pride in a bad way, I mean kind of what makes us feel good about having kind of achieved something against the odds.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Is there is there something in uh so a few as you were talking, a few sort of things percolated. Maybe the one that um maybe the one that comes to me most is that when my daughter was born, I held her in my arms and I've said this many times. I held her and I said, there's two things I want for her. One is that she learns how to be still. Right? I'm a half-developed child. So I thought that that's going to be challenging for me to help her to be that. But I wanted that for her, and the other was that she followed her dreams, and I thought I can't ask her to do that if I don't follow mine. So I went back and retrained in Paris at a place called Lecoq, which is a mime and physical clowning school. And I took her with me when she was very young, and I I retrained, and that's where my storytelling journey maybe um took off professionally, but I wasn't any good. I I I I didn't do well. I wish I'd known about musing at the time because I gave myself a very hard time, but it did take me to that place of storytelling. So lovely. Maybe that's something that I am pleased to have done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

We have a connection because I spent some time taking photographs in the early 1980s of my of a mime school in Paris in Bastille with a friend of mine. So I I did a lot of black and white photography for a couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

Um and uh and and it was gorgeous. Would it have been Lecoq? Oh I'm not sure. I have to go back and check. It could have been.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

I mean that's the famous that's the famous Paris school. It was it was uh Jacques Jacques Lecoq was um the guy who um set it up. How fascinating. How interesting.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Connecting with sculptors and other kinds of people. So there was a little thing that's just sparked up again there. You know, fantastic. Story. Story, exactly. Um uh how about uh heroine or a hero.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

So I am working on a storytelling project at the moment, and it is about Madge Turner, who was uh Chichester born and a su just down the road here? Yes, just down the road here, a suffragist. And I have been working with young children, I was invited into a big, big, big project that I've been a very small part of, and I'm learning more and more about Madge and about Murial Sparks and about the suffragists. And I can't get her out of my head. Wonderful, wonderful. Wow. Yeah, how can these women have changed the world?

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Yes, yes, exactly. Uh so you're bringing people who maybe have been partly forgotten about?

SPEAKER_02 42:43

She was definitely forgotten about, yeah. Yes, and um there is going to be a statue, and it's happened fairly recently that um our local history society, I believe, has um been championing this, and it's linked to, you know, there are a lot of statues about men, for men, um most of them. Yeah. And um and so this uh wonderful um sculptor Kate Viner has is creating this sculpture, and I've seen the small version of it. Oh amazing. And for me, it's story, it's story, it's story.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

It is, and we'll be in a public place. Yes. Some uh where people in Chichester? In the kind of the commons of the public place where people will see and ask questions and think that makes me think about it.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

And the and the whole project is being done in such a way that it's involving the local community. Fantastic. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Brilliant. A book? A book to recommend? Your book. Well, no, well, that was we'll mention your book as well.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Okay, that's very kind. Um a book to recommend. Oh my goodness. Um I wish you'd asked me these questions before, um, so that I could think about it. Well, the book that's coming to me, I'm from Yorkshire originally, and The Secret Garden. Yeah. It is challenging in many ways. Um, not least because of that whole um empire part of it, and to do with um illness and disability and ability, and do we just flick our fingers and make people well again? You know, it it's a challenging book. Yeah. But that message of how nature can really change us and inspire us and make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

There's a there's an enchantment that happens in that way.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

There is. Yeah. And and and the and you know, the community of those Yorkshire folk and the disconnection of the people in the big house. You know, there's those there's those themes.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Yes. Yeah. And story changes constantly when it's told. Yes. Um, across the generations, will be reinterpreted what people were telling in a certain kind of context two thousand years ago, a thousand years later, that same story will be told very differently. Yeah. It may have the same core component.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

So there's no reason why we shouldn't take something like the secret garden and just fill it out the bits that don't work.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Well, yes, or at least be conscious of what they are and um be mindful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

That they were written of a time, at a time.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

Yes, and and we don't want to be perpetuating those same uh stereotypes or problems.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Um a top action for viewers and listeners who are thinking about story. We've been talking about story and how it's central to all human cultures. Um notice the buttercup.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Yes, maybe just yes, but also um if you have children, um, however old they are, share a story with them. Either get them to tell you or you tell them, or just give a moment, read a piece of poetry together, you know, have that moment, but not once. It needs to be repeated because it's in the repetition where where the love grows, you know. You can't water this rose once.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

You need to make sure it is watered. Yes. Um, if you don't have children yourself, uh if you're connected to children, then share stories and share them with each other. Yeah, just take a moment over a cup of tea to have a memory um of something and tell that story, that biographical story.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

How lovely. Daniel Miller, thank you very much indeed. It's been a real pleasure to enter slow time for a little while today. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Thank you for inviting me today.