Storytelling Beyond Words

A 12-week Full-Time Storytelling course to meet the challenges of these times

*APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN*

STORYTELLING BEYOND WORDS 2025

Sunday, 23 Feb 2025 to Friday, 23 May 2025

(1 week Easter Break: 12 April – 21 April)

To book on the course please download and fill out the application form below

and email it to Chiara Carones at registrar@emerson.org.uk.

Course Information & Application Form

What makes a story work?
Can words shift the world?
What inner shift is asked of us to help this happen?

This full time, 12 week training in the art and craft of storytelling aims to prepare you to carry the spoken word and a lively imagination into your communities and places of work. Whether you wish through sharing stories to entertain, educate, counsel, inspire or advocate change; whether the stage, fire side, classroom, board room, or the bedside of a dying person is the context for your telling, this is our flagship training to develop a way of storytelling unique to your own voice and calling. Join us on a journey to light up your creativity and, through the surprising perspectives that this work offers, discover new aspects of who you are. This journey, both playful and profound, opens a path of development and transformation guided by humanity’s great shifters and shapers – Stories.

This course is being offered through Emerson College, led by Roi Gal-Or, co-founder of the International School Of Storytelling, and Karmit Even-Zur. We are delighted once again to be able to accept students from outside the EU onto the course.

Long before television was ever imagined storytellers and bards, prophets and poets were called upon to tell their visions and, through a live encounter, provide images that could direct, entertain, provoke, heal and reconcile the communities in which they worked. As a storyteller any story that you craft will in turn craft you to be a fit instrument for its telling. We are, in fact, made of stories, some of which serve our individual and collective endeavours, others binding us to outmoded images. Imagination, therefore, will be our key to the invisible realm from which all stories and everything new and possible can be born. Coupled with clear intention, this essential human faculty will help us connect to those creative forces which are ever available to us. The future is shaped, for good or ill, by the stories we believe and follow.

When an old story cracks and falls apart we know a new one is emerging. The story of our time calls for heightened awareness of themes such as the relationship between outer world and inner experience, and the dynamics between the feminine and masculine principles. ‘Listen to life’s movement’, it says... 'where it wants to flow, then risk following its currents'. The oral tradition is humming with fine and foolish wisdoms, and we invite you to join our enquiry into how what is sounding there can help the birthing of the new paradigm so much needed in our times.

As the pace of modern life accelerates, luring us away from the rhythms and patterns of nature, we intend in this course to slow down and attune to the heartbeat of the earth and open our five and twenty senses to the wonder of it. From this place of presence and connection a new language can arise. The art of deep listening is the foundation for the initiation of the storyteller, and as we practice it we will begin to develop ways to ‘speak into action’ the changes we wish for when faced by 21st century challenges.

Combining contemporary social entrepreneurial principles and skills with the repertoire of stories that you collect and shape during our time together you will be invited to create a research project on a personal, social or environmental theme (whatever is close to your heart) that can be taken into the world and engage the people around you. As the search for healthy social awareness is integral to the storyteller’s role, the honing of the required perception and skills will be a part of our practice. We, facilitators of the course, will strive to create a space in which we can all work and play together in freedom, sharing responsibility with you, our fellow learning practitioners.

In our work we mean to cultivate truthful, mindful and courageous speaking, sharing our passions, questions, vulnerabilities and aspirations. Walking this path you will be encouraged to align with your inner strengths and with the quest you brought with you into the world, remembering, of course, to have fun along the way.

Themes explored on the course:

The Oral Tradition: Building a repertoire as a storyteller, working with folk tales, wonder tales and ancient myths. As a group, we will explore the relationship between stories old and new, their relevance to our life, and which of them are asking to be told today.

The Skills of the Storyteller: In-depth work on story structure, voice, gesture, movement, audience awareness, spontaneity and improvisation, authenticity and presence.

Autobiographical Storytelling: Working with meaningful experiences of your life and shaping them into stories to inspire individuals and communities and to nourish the earth.

Visionary activism: Imagination, activated through work with stories, rituals, performance art and games, will enhance your potential to inspire, foster hope, and bring into public consciousness the new narratives and visions that you wish to share.

Coaching: In a supportive atmosphere with individual tutorials, feedback and coaching you will develop your own style of telling and find what you wish to serve with your unique voice and stories.

Social action: Learning to use story, strategy and structure to put your vision into action. Developing ‘out of the box’ solutions to challenges you wish to address.

Deep listening in nature: Practices to tune in to the inter-relationships between all living systems, and our evolving planet as a conscious entity full of life and stories.

Performances: Throughout the course there will be plenty of scope for practicing your stories, including weekly opportunities to share them with a variety of audiences.

Self study: Participants are expected to put in a certain amount of work to get the most out of the course. This includes reading stories to find the ones they wish to work with and doing the required assignments over the weekends and breaks.

Supporting subjects will include: singing, movement, games and improvisation, connecting with nature, writing creatively, social entrepreneurship and more. (See 'Guest Teachers' below).

Over the years we have worked with people from a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities, ages and professions. The working language is English.

Course Dates:

Sunday, 23 Feb 2025 to Friday, 23 May 2025

(1 week Easter Break: 12 April – 21 April)

Tuition fee: Early bird £5100 (bursaries available), after 1 November £5450.
Accommodation & meals available on a self-catering, half or full-board basis, as follows:
Accommodation + welcome supper + lunches Monday – Friday – £3730.50
Accommodation with self catering – £2892.50
Lunches Mon – Fri only – £826.00
Lunches Mon – Fri only + Welcome supper – £838.00

If you have already been awarded a place on the course and would like to book your meals and accommodation at Emerson College, please contact our bookings team.

Course contributors 2025:

Retta Bowen

Naamah Pinkerfeld

Sidddharth Gupta

Sarah Perceval
Anne Cross

Katherine Beaven

(This list is subject to last-minute changes.)

This course is open BY APPLICATION ONLY.

Bursaries:

For the 4th year in a row, we intend to offer at least one FULL tuition bursary spot on its 12 week full time course at Emerson College. These bursaries depend on our fundraising campaign and donations.

If you are seeking to develop your storytelling skills and vision in service of your community but are not in a financial position to attend our course we encourage you to make an application stating in the bursary forms that you are applying for the full bursary. The full bursary will be given after a selection process to the most suitable person with priority based on:

Financial necessity - income based, underprivileged / disadvantaged background, demonstration of current community involvement to which you wish to bring the storytelling work to. Application deadline for the full bursary - 1st November 2025. Applicants will be notified by the 15th December.

Several partial bursaries are also available via the Emerson bursary fund.

More information on the course and a link to the application form can be found here.

DONATE - At the moment we have one full tuition bursary and several partial bursaries to offer. If you are reading this and are in a position to donate to the bursary fund please do so here. Your donation will help us reach more people and help us guarantee the cultural, financial and diversity of participants who would otherwise not be able to enroll on this course.

2025 Applicants

*APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN*

How to Apply

To apply, please click the ‘APPLY’ button below.

You will be directed to fill out the online application form and upload the documents listed below (see

To complete this application you will need to have the following documents:

A copy or a scan of the information page of your passport (the one with your picture on it)

A concise personal statement to include information on your background and motivation to take part in the programme

2 referee letters – to include connection/relationship to the applicant

A completed health statement available to download here: Health Statement

You will also need to provide contact details for someone you would chose to be your emergency contact, should you be accepted onto the course.

If you have any questions please contact Chiara Carones – registrar@emerson.org.uk.

Please Note:

During this training, we shall be working with traditional and biographical stories, all of which may serve as mirrors and doors to soul searching themes, and that may at times be challenging. Whilst the teachers will support all participants during the workshop, this is not a therapy group and that participants are ultimately responsible for their own process and integration of the experience.

Apply today!