Storytellers tackle modern woes with old tales

WEM, England (Reuters Life!) - Ancient stories first told by the Aztecs and Sumerians are helping businesses and people in the age of the Internet to make sense of modern life.

Professional storytellers like Dez Quarrell are using tales culled from cultures around the world to explain the conundrums of modern life for technology companies, marketing executives, education experts and of course, children.

"Stories are fabulous things, they can be used for virtually everything. They can be used in business, in education, in healthcare, in anything really," Quarrell said.

Quarrell said there were about 450 professional storytellers plying the trade in Britain who can charge up to 300 pounds ($596.5) for a two-hour session.

He told of one technology company which hired a storyteller to help its marketing team understand its firewall computer security product.

"The storyteller made a story likening firewalls to protecting a castle and explained it to the sales teams," he said. "The company was back in business."

Quarrell, who taught his severely dyslexic son maths and science through storytelling, has also designed computer programs to tell stories to children in English and French.

Sitting on a wooden bench in his Mythstories Museum in the small town of Wem in central England, Quarrell said he collected stories from his travels, storybooks and more recently the Internet.

He has also compiled various guides or 'storywalks', where a walk around villages and towns is enlivened by tales of the scenery and landmarks.

The museum holds monthly storytelling evenings for local people, who range from retired businesspeople to teachers.

"I would describe myself as an evangelist for storytelling, I want a storytelling centre like this one in every county in England," he said, pointing to pictures and paintings of Hindu gods Krishna and Rama as well as those of local Shropshire legends hanging on the museum walls.

Quarrell's love of stories stems from his time at primary school when his Anglo-Indian teacher would tell the children stories if they stayed late to help her clean the glue brushes and wash the jam jars.

"I'd found myself an excuse to stay late and would be captivated by the Hindu epics and folk stories she'd tell, and that has stayed with me all my life," he said.

The 52-year old storyteller, who also paints pictures to illustrate South American and Hindu stories, said his work fits well with Britain's hopes of achieving a shared, multicultural heritage.

"When Tony Blair introduced initiatives for multiculturalism, and Shropshire wanted a multi-ethnic education programme I was asked to tell the children my stories and show them my paintings," he said.

"I have a story from Russia, India, Africa, everywhere in the world, apart from maybe Antarctica," he said.

Asked to tell a story which encapsulates the world today, white-haired Quarrell told the story of Noah's Ark, drawing parallels with ancient Sumerian stories from Iraq, Hindu stories from India and Aztec stories from Mexico.

"These are ancient stories which predate any connections between civilizations but they all run to the same recipe," Quarrell said. "If we were to look back at our stories we would see that in many cases stories are the glue that binds us all together."