The Storytelling Festival

The Storytelling Festival in Skellefteå is a week filled with the power of storytelling and the delight that comes from watching and listening. We meet storytellers from the Storytelling Town of Skellefteå and from the region of Västerbotten, whom together with national and international guests, offer a host of storytelling experiences for all ages and tastes.

The festival is a shop window for all forms of storytelling. The aim is to highlight the importance of storytelling, both on stage and as a working method in other areas such as teaching, integration, the transfer of cultural inheritance and corporate storytelling. The festival displays the art of storytelling in many different forms – storytelling theatre, storytelling cafés, literary storytelling, seminars, music, competitions, workshops, children story times and a lot more. During the festival week events are being organized throughout the Municipality of Skellefteå.

The Storytelling Festival 2024
The 16th Storytelling Festival will take place from 14. to 20. of October 2024. Diversity and breadth are, as always, the motto of the festival. This year we are happy to present a wide range of professional storytelling guests from throughout the Nordic region and Europe. As always there are more than 100 events during the week, in many different venues around Skellefteå municipality including Sara – the new cultural centre, currently one of the tallest timber buildings in the world. It is Skellefteå’s new hub for art, concerts, shows, theatre, meetings and congresses, and now of course storytelling.

Organisation – a collaboration project
The Storytelling Festival is a collaboration project with various participants who wish to retain the strong storytelling tradition in the region, and develop the role of storytelling in Skellefteå. The key figures that took the initiative to arrange the festival at the beginning were: Skellefteå Municipality’s Cultural Administration, Skellefteå Museum, Västerbottensteatern – the regional theatre and Västerbotten Museum. Today the festival is arranged by Nordic Storytelling Centre in Skellefteå, a part of Västerbottensteatern. The theatre has been commissioned by Skellefteå Municipality to establish Scandinavia’s first-ever Storytelling Centre. Funding for the new centre has also been awarded by Västerbotten Region and the Swedish Arts Council.

The festival remains a collaboration project with the initial organisers. There are also many other local organisations involved, such as educational associations, societies, schools, cafés, high schools, bookshops, libraries and many others.

Welcome to Skellefteå – a place for storytelling!