VIEW ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
Where do your stories live? On stage? In a TV?
In books? In your head?
In that small rectangle full of rare earth metal scrolling in your palm?
What if…
We brings stories to you. Delivered on your doorstep. Your footpath. In your hood. Live - on STOP signs, on money, on suburban walls and in Sydney’s most beautiful places.
Close this screen. Rise up from your table. Open your door. Head outside and find the many muses we’re curating into the world around you.
Story Week’s schedule matches the great migration of millions of Australian Caper Butterflies.
They travel along the east coast this November to mate, eat and spawn.
This is your signal to transform socially distant into #socialbutterfly. Trade your grey pale isolated self for #butterfliesofcolour.
Join Word Travels for Story Week 2021 as we Incubate, Create & Celebrate.
STORY WEEK PROGRAM
Ongoing Events
GUEST CURATORS
HANI ABDILE
"Story Week is a time where all brains collide to create and share. For me
personally stories are powerful on their own, they are courage with wheels,
they are knowledge which is the core of every step we take. And sometimes I
can't describe the understanding and perspective that we gain when a festival
like this takes place.
...
What I love about living in Australia - its river of stories, some hurts more
than others but they all smile while they have a hunger for change. At the most
challenging times stories are able to bring laughter and conversions to our communities.
This year has been out of its head, lockdowns which edge the artists closer to the cliff
with all the uncertainty that covid brings. Being part of the guest curation team has
been a great pleasure, having the opportunity to sit down via phone or ol’ mate zoom with
fellow artists to reflect on life and our mutual passion for poetry art.
My mission is to grow platforms like this because literature is the best documentation of history."
MEL REE
"Storytelling is the oldest form of education. I am privileged to live, work and play
amongst and with some of the most raw, talented, necessarily unapologetic and inspiring
artists who use spoken word and poetry as a vehicle to deliver vital messages that help us
to understand this human condition, that take us from strangers to community by simply
sharing profound
...
collective truths. It is my pleasure to curate artists whom I respect deeply,
whose work has transformed me and moved me in ways only art can. It is even more so of a
pleasure to continue to work with Story Fest, Word Travels and Australian Poetry Slam, whose
existences undoubtedly offer themselves to the rise of the collective conscience, to the
opening and celebration of marginalised voices, and thus, ultimately, to the Revolution!
From the most difficult of circumstances artists will always rise up in exciting, newly
imagined ways, this is precisely what has happened here, Story Fest is a festival like
no other! Thanks to Covid (can’t believe 'm thanking Covid but it’s true) Miles Merrill
and his creative team have envisioned new possibilities for audience and artist engagement.
Just as Squid Game (if you haven’t seen it you must) created a new kind of realm for delivering
exquisite television viewing, Story Fest has imagined multifaceted, unique ways of sharing
stories. Please, read the festival guide, then read it again, then invite yourself, your
family and friends to take part in new kinds of realms where stories and human connection
gather in unlikely spaces.
"
AWESOME BLACK
"Awesome Black are incredibly excited to partner with Word Travels as First Nations
Creative Producers and specifically on the curation and delivery of the 2021 Story
Week. Creating programs that centre authentic First Nations voices and stories is
an honour for us, it is what we love doing, it is the very core
...
of who we are as an organisation.
Brooke Scobie and Tully De Vries have worked closely with
the Word Travels team and our communities to feature
artists whose voices need to be heard, who need to be
listened to."
