How To Start a Storytelling Festival

The title says "How to", but the truth is, I'm just about to begin to learn.  I've been invited to hold a storytelling festival at a beautiful camp in Cambria, California - Camp Ocean Pines.

We have the date:  September 16

We have the place:  Camp Ocean Pines

                                      We need .......

                                                                   ...........  everything else.

It's called the Peace Love Story Fest.  I've been using the Peace Love Story for a while now, and really liked it as a theme for the festival.

 The idea for the theme came about when I was in New York City with my daughter at the Montessori Model United Nations Conference in April.  

I was watching the students caucus about the issue of the status of the Israeli/Palestinian heritage sites.  One after another, the recommendations for a resolution offered the idea that the sites should be owned by the UN, kept neutral, or managed by UNESCO.  It was then that I realized that there was something missing in these ideas.

How do you shift the Israeli's and the Palestinian's stories in order to allow for the neutrality of these sites?  Each side believes that it must preserve the sacredness according to it's own religious dictates.  Only a new story, a story in which the respective deities desire and require the two sides to work peacefully together would create a peaceful resolution.

That's when I realized that a storytelling festival could be the beginning point from which awareness, dialogue and then, action toward creating real peace would be launched.

The timing was good.  Our date was already set at the weekend of September 15 - 16.  One week before the UN's International Day of Peace on September 21. 

I decided the festival would be the kickoff of a week of Peace Awareness.  A 1,000 Crane Peace Sculpture would be unveiled at the PLS Fest, and then displayed at other locations during the week, culminating on the 21st.  My goal is to get people talking, listening, and then acting.

I did some research and learned about Peace One Day, an organization started by Jeremy Gilley.  

So, here we are 

          an idea, 

          some information, 

          1,000 cranes to fold, and, 

          miles to go before I sleep.......