Qisetna (Talking Syria)

Qisetna’s three-day storytelling workshop in Nottingham led by British storyteller Marion Kenny and Syrian Hakawati (storyteller in Arabic) Bassam Dawood, which aims to showcase the importance & art of storytelling as a way to share and learn ideas, values and practices. Cultural and communication barriers ceased to exist in this workshop as the Syrian newcomers who settled in the UK and a mixture of active members of Nottingham found common ground, connected to their personal treasures.
The 13 participants that experienced emotions such as pain, sadness, happiness and surprise when relaying these stories in relation to their personal treasure. The aims of storytelling workshop are to help build confidence and a sense of identity, acknowledging the diversity as well as to use a story of everyday life to reflect on how storytelling can bring benefits to the people in the community. Storytelling paves a way to open up and tackle problems the Syrian refugees deal with -from social issues to processing trauma from war.
The Qisetna storytelling programme covered different exercises to help the participants feel comfortable, starting off with playing traditional Syrian music. Icebreaking exercise is then carried out, getting a sense of the space; with eyes closed participants walked in circle sensing other walking nearby. Then, one person would stand in the middle of the circle formed by the others, in which the middle person would close their eyes and fall, allowing the circle of participants to catch and push them to the next, as a trust building exercise. Afterwards, the participants would sit in a circle and pass their personal treasure along to the next person and explain to everyone why it is so important to them, which boosts their confidence and may provide them with an idea for their own story.
Then, the people were given basics techniques to propel their story forward, to create personal, fully formed characters and the musical, rhythmic language of storytelling. They told their stories in Arabic and English; a facilitator translated the story simultaneously. Some participants even brought their own musical instruments, including a violin, oud, flute, harp, guitar, which were tuned for a melody everyone knew. The group agreed that music would be incorporated in the stories, to truly feel the scene that they were to delineate.