About

The tale behind the Storytale Festival

Our story began in early 2019 when our protagonist, Ellie Freeman, decided to follow her dream of putting on Bristol’s first ever citywide children’s book festival.

Ellie, a community activist, mum, and passionate book lover, started a mission to bring books, storytelling, and poetry to children across the city. Storytale Festival CIC aims to:

• Showcase local talent.
• Give children the chance to meet creative people from their community.
• Inspire young people to become authors and illustrators themselves one day.
• Create a festival that makes the most of community buildings in Bristol.
• Put on affordable events for all.

The fantastic team behind Storytale Festival. Learn more about them here.

So, Ellie approached some of Bristol’s wonderful children’s book authors, illustrators, and storytellers and invited them along with her on a journey to encourage a new generation of book lovers. During this part of the adventure Ellie discovered Kate Frost, author of children’s book series Time Shifters, who became co-founder of the festival.

She also went about finding a key group of characters to help her organise the festival:

Nicola Kear, owner of Grounded Cloud, provided branding, graphic and web design services.
Jenny Farrington, freelancer at J Farrington Copywriting, contributed creative copywriting services.

There were many others who played important roles too, including:

Greet Pauwelijn, from Book Island, provided invaluable support and advice, and helped grow awareness of the festival.
Laura Humpage, from Colourful Minds, dedicated a whole term of her story and craft workshops to celebrating books by Bristol authors and illustrators, curated by Storytale Festival.

Pridie Tiernan, from The Wild of the Words, gave a lot of encouragement and support, which helped shape the festival.
Paula Bowles and Lauren Tobia, two talented illustrators, started the travelling sketchbook on its way.

Chapter 1 of the Storytale Festival began at venues around Bristol on 25th October 2019, with prequel events starting earlier in September. And, due to the kindness of volunteers, all the events were under £5, or free. The plan is to make them affordable for book lovers, forevermore.

Like with most novels, there are twists and turns in real life, so we’ve had to adapt our story for this year. Chapter 3 of the festival will continue to take place online, with 5 inspirational events you can enjoy at home.

Are you ready to become part of our journey? Let’s begin…