Storytelling Festival returns to Limburg

The International Storytelling Festival at Alden Biesen, a historic site in Limburg province, has been celebrating and promoting the art of live storytelling for nearly two decades. Originally conceived as an initiative aimed at school groups, the eight-day programme now includes a weekend festival for the general public. Visitors can expect a mix of story genres: folk tales, travel adventures, ghost stories, real-life experiences and, naturally, fairy tales and legends.

“When you listen to a story, it makes you feel at ease and gives you a kind of joy,” says the festival’s organiser, Katrijn Beelen.

The three-day Storytelling Weekend begins with a thematic, English programme on Friday evening, with stories from a specific foreign land and culture. For “Twist in the Sari: Stories from India”, Kamini Ramachandran, a storyteller from Singapore, will share folk tales from the countryside of southern India. Peter Chand, who lives in England, has been collecting traditional stories from his homeland in northern India for many years.

On Saturday evening, five storytellers from Flanders, Austria, France and Great Britain will share the stage, telling their stories in Dutch, French, German and English. The weekend concludes with a family festival on Sunday afternoon. “We have a combination of storytelling sessions inside the rooms of the castle, and we have storytelling entertainment outside, on the grass,” explains Beelen.

An activity that was very popular with kids last year will be back again: The Poetic Hair Salon. The unusual hairdressers, wearing fancy clothes and lots of makeup, tell jokes and recite poems while keeping up a constant patter. Elsewhere, a roaming tree hung with lost toys and other treasures tells stories about the objects in its branches.

The colourful Story Bus doesn’t actually travel anywhere, but a group of storytellers on board keep passengers entertained with tales and games. At the same time, storytellers inside the castle will tell stories in several different languages for adults, and in Dutch only for children. Both Ramachandran and Chand will also be on hand for the family festival.