Taffy Thomas, MBE is a storyteller, based in Grasmere in the

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Biography

In September 2009, Thomas accepted the honorary position of the UK's first Laureate for Storytelling, which was officially launched on 30 January 2010 at the

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as part of a series of national events for National Storytelling Week, for a period of two years.

Brian Patten Brian Patten (born 7 February 1946) is an English poet and author. He came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool poets, and writes primarily lyrical poetry about human relationships. His famous works include "Little Johnny's Confessi ...

Michael Rosen Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who is a professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths ...

, Pete Suchil Chand, Patsy Heap, Del Reid and Simon Thirsk are patrons and official guardians of the first laureate for storytelling. Thomas trained as a Literature and Drama teacher at Dudley College of Education, before teaching in

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. While teaching, he also founded two companies to promote folk theatre and rural arts. Thomas fronted and performed in the ''Fabulous Salami Brothers'', the popular touring unit of ''Charivari'', while ''The Magic Lantern'' traveled Europe illustrating folk songs by use of shadow puppets. A stroke at the age of 36 brought another change in direction when he turned to

storytelling Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing narrative, stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatre, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cul ...

as self-imposed

speech therapy Speech is the use of the human voice as a medium for language. Spoken language combines vowel and consonant sounds to form units of meaning like words, which belong to a language's lexicon. There are many different intentional speech acts, suc ...

. Now widely acknowledged as England's leading proponent in the art of traditional storytelling, Thomas boasts a repertoire of over 300 tales and elaborate 'lies' collected predominantly from oral sources and

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

. With so many stories in Thomas's head, fellow storyteller Giles Abbot once remarked "when Taffy goes it will be like a library burning down." In the 2001

New Year Honours List The New Year Honours is a part of the British honours system, with New Year's Day, 1 January, being marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. A number of other Commonwealth realms also mark this ...

, he was awarded the MBE for services to storytelling and charity, and later in the year performed a new collaboration for the

Blue Peter ''Blue Peter'' is a British children's television entertainment programme created by John Hunter Blair. It is the longest-running children's TV show in the world, having been broadcast since October 1958. It was broadcast primarily from BBC ...

Prom at the

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in London. Combining the fields of education and entertainment, Thomas has toured nationally and internationally, appearing at the Settle Storytelling Festival,

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Arts Festival in

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, the American

National Storytelling Festival The National Storytelling Festival is held the first full weekend of October in Jonesborough, Tennessee at the International Storytelling Center. The National Storytelling Festival was founded by Jimmy Neil Smith, a high school journalism teacher, ...

, and a stint as storyteller-in-residence for the programme of summer residencies at the National Center for Storytelling in

Jonesborough, Tennessee Jonesborough (; historically also Jonesboro) is a town in and the county seat of Washington County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. Its population was 5,860 as of 2020. It is "Tennessee's oldest town". Jonesborough is part of the ...

in 2006. Thomas is currently artistic director of Tales in Trust, the Northern Centre for Storytelling, in Grasmere, and a patron of the Society for Storytelling.

References

External links

Taffy Thomas' WebsiteGrasmere
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Taffy Living people British storytellers Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Grasmere (village) Year of birth missing (living people)