Stor Ytent

A recording of Alastair's live online performance during the Covid-19 crisis for the World Storytelling Cafe Alastair K. Daniel is a performance storyteller, researcher, writer and consultant in storytelling (and related fields) working in the UK and abroad. Following twelve years touring schools in the UK and the Low Countries with The Story Tent, in 2010 Alastair made the move from professional storytelling to academia. In the summer of 2022, Alastair ended his term as Principal Lecturer in Primary English at the University of Roehampton in 2022 to focus on storytelling once more, and develop his work as an independent scholar. Alastair's 'Story Tent' style brings traditional and literary texts to life through physicalisation, puppets, masks, costumes, artefacts, rhymes and songs - creating performances in which the distinction between performer and audience become blurred. The Story Tent project came out of Alastair's use of storytelling as a teaching strategy with children with profound emotional and behavioural difficulties. He found that storytelling (contrasted with story-reading) provided a unique method of drawing children, who often had difficulties with imaginative play, into new worlds. As a consultant and researcher, Alastair has worked with a range of organisations and specialises in the application of oral storytelling in educational contexts and the use of narrative analysis to evaluate educational programmes.