Jamie Crawford

The GuestHouse Storytellers is one of the most successful storytelling clubs in the country. We are a non-profit organisation run by a committee of volunteers.

The club meets on the second Tuesday of every month (except July and August) at The Hillcrest Centre in Newhaven. We have no registered membership; everyone is welcome and you become a member by attending. To find out about upcoming events you can register for our newsletter.

Most of our evenings are open evenings, where anyone may book a slot to tell a ten minute story on whatever theme has been chosen for that month.  Tellers vary from the very well trained and experienced to people stepping into the water for the first time. Everyone is welcome and every story and teller is different, providing a varied and rich feast of tales to carry away with you and maybe even retell.

Three times a year we have professional tellers. We have hosted some of the top storytellers in the country – Hugh Lupton, Sally Pomme Clayton, June Peters, the Dacres, Ashley Ramsden, Xanthe Gresham, Roi Gal-or, Nick and Emily Hennessey and many others.Every summer we hold an event at the Lifeboat Station in Newhaven to raise money for the RNLI. We are grateful to Newhaven Town Council for giving us funding to cover expenses so we have been able to donate the entire ticket price to the lifeboat.

An oral story is a living thing and it lives and evolves, not in the words, but in the images you, the listener, create in your imagination and the words that you use to pass it on. It carries the meaning that you take from it. It becomes yours. And just as important as any of the above, storytelling is fun. It makes you laugh and cry, feel angry and joyful and nourished.

These are some of our things people have said after attending their first oral storytelling performance:
“It was incredible. I felt I was right there in the story. I could see the pictures, hear the voices, even smell the flowers and feel the breeze on my skin.”
“I was completely transported to a different world. When the story ended it took me a few minutes to come back to the room where we were.”
It is hard for an adult to remember the childhood experience of being immersed in a well told story. Why not come along and try it?

Our History

In 2006 a group of us did a course in storytelling at the University of Sussex and discovered an art form that we had no idea still existed.

Afterwards we wanted to go on telling and listening to stories so we continued to meet, then bring friends along, and gradually we evolved into The GuestHouse Storytellers club. We chose the name from a poem by the 12^th century Persian mystic, Rumi, which you can read here: http://www.gratefulness.org/poetry/guest_house.htm

Venue: Hillcrest Community Centre, Bay Vue Road, Newhaven BN9 9LH. (Map) Free Parking. Disabled access. Café.

Time:   Second Tuesdays, September to June. Café opens 6.30pm. Stories from 7.30pm