March 20, is celebrated as World Storytelling Day around the globe, it is a celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It can be presented in any language or form and still be relevant. The history of storytelling day lies in Sweden, when an event was organised named ‘All Storytellers Day’ on 20th March. Even though the people who were a part of that event gradually passed away, some enthusiasts celebrated it around the country. In 1997, storytellers in Perth, Australia arranged a five-week long celebration of storytelling and observed 20th March as international day of oral narrators.
In Mexico and other Latin American countries March 20 was already celebrated as National Day of Storytellers.
The aim of celebrating World Storytelling Day is to promote storytelling as an art with everyone around the world. People around the world can come to specific online platform and showcase their talent of telling and listening stories in their languages and make it an international event. Storytelling can promote positive understanding of cultures around the world and help grow linguistic diversity.
When population grew, people started shifting across countries, they carried their experiences and conveyed it to the next generation in form of stories. Through storytelling one can pass their experiences from one generation to another. As we grow, more experiences are added to the stories of past. Each year there is a theme on which the storytellers tell their stories, most of them try to adopt the theme into their stories but some choose to rely on their own theme.
The theme of World Storytelling Day 2022 is ‘Lost and Found’, last year we all have lost many people and things to diseases, war and natural calamities and there is a hope in all of us to find happiness again. Storytellers will aim to tell stories on this theme and inspire other to find meaning in life again. Many people visit live storytelling events, to libraries and take part in storytelling competition held online. Schools and other educational institutions also conduct storytelling competition between students to expand their skills and public speaking abilities.
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