NORTHSTAR STORYTELLING LEAGUE

Northstar Storytelling League promotes storytelling and develops and supports storytellers. We value the oral tradition of storytelling as an art form, and encourage dialogue with other narrative arts.

Northstar welcomes storytellers of all cultures, experience levels, backgrounds and styles. We seek to make storytelling accessible to a diverse audience and encourage the use of storytelling in other professions. Because storytelling can bridge cultures, enhance understanding, and create common ground, we foster its use as an outreach tool to connect individuals, communities and organizations.

Northstar’s current programming includes three monthly storytelling events, an annual festival, and regular workshops. PJ Stories, at five years, is our longest-running monthly program, and offers family friendly storytelling. All are welcome. Our other monthly events, also open to the public, Folktales Rising and the Children’s Storytelling Guild, meet to work on and share stories, rather than perform to an audience.

Our Tellabration! ™ festival, held the weekend after Thanksgiving at Open Book, has been our primary outreach and public awareness tool, and is currently the largest and most diverse storytelling event in Minnesota, as well as one of the largest Tellabration events in the country. This year the event begins on Friday night November 25 with an evening concert, and continues all day Saturday November 26 with a children's concert, workshops, open mics and daytime performances. For the first time, in 2011 we will end our festival Saturday night with a StorySlam. We'd love to see you there!

Northstar also offers affordable workshops on the art and craft of storytelling to both members and the general public. Most recently, through a grant from the Metro Regional Arts Council (MRAC), we completed a well-received series of six workshops on being a teaching artist in K-12 schools.

But we could do so much more. For example:

• We would like to strengthen our year-round educational programming, for children as well as adults, but story clubs and workshop series have costs - costs that are hard to recoup entirely from fees, especially in this economy. Our events need to be affordable.
• We would like to offer another anchor event in the first half of the year that would generate more earned income - but the start-up costs, both in time and talent, are considerable.
• Most importantly, perhaps, we would like to build our infrastructure to allow us to have consistent, year-round communications and marketing support. What good is it to have great programming if no one knows that it's there?

To do all these things, we need to diversify our revenue stream. The largest proportion of our support comes from our MRAC and MSAB grants, for which a 20% match is required. Just 6% of our support comes from membership fees. We are therefore looking to increase support from individual donors like you, as well as to grow our earned income from ticket sales and workshop fees.

Won't you help us?

Northstar was founded in 1999, and became a 501c3 nonprofit in 2002. We are approaching our ten year anniversary. We are grateful for those who had the vision and determination to get this organization off the ground. The best way to express that gratitute now is to ground the organization in a solid foundation and infrastructure, and craft together a vision for the future.

For that, we need you.

Stories have the power to change and inspire not only the audience that hears them, but the artist who creates and is created by them. Northstar values creative expression on all levels and provide opportunities for all individuals to grow and develop as artists through practicing the art and craft of storytelling..

If you value this work as well, and want to see it grow, please consider supporting us in 2011!