Iris Curteis

I am first and foremost a storyteller. I inherited this oral-aural tradition from my grandmother, who received the art of telling from her mother and her eight older sisters.  My grandmother passed the skill of telling tales, and the tales she’d received, to me. There is nothing life can throw at us that cannot be answered with a story. Storytelling empowers our imagination and creative thinking and supports us to gently explore our life through metaphors and images, to recognise ourselves in the framework of a story, and to appreciate our life as a work of art.

As a social artist, I’m passionate about using creativity to change the way we think about our lives and how this can build our capacity to shape more humane communities and support transformational change. This is something I work with in the Yarning circles with Elders of different ‘nations’ from across this continent. As a social artist, I’m drawn to Joseph Beuys and his insights that art and only art can ‘dismantle the repressive effects of a senile social system’^[1]while still promoting and supporting ‘autonomous individual creative potency’^[2]that engages everyone in a process of ‘direct democracy’^[3]. This creates the ‘social sculpture’ where each and everyone of us becomes an artist, a sculptor, of the social life; a process in which every individual can contribute to the creative shaping of a social organism – a socialwork of art created and owned by all.  Like Beuys, it is also important to me to not only theorise about creativity but to demonstrate the efficacy of art and to use creative arts practice as a creative methodology. Beuys performance art was highly personalised and ritualistic offering an experience of how art and creativity could be tools of evolution and revolution capable of changing social structures.

My academic research of Story and the act of telling led me through a PhD that focuses on how storytelling creates ‘liminal space’, which is the space created when mundane reality and the reality of the story intersect or overlap. Within this space, the story listener experiences a state of liminality that is vital for the integration of knowledge acquired through intuition, perception or reason, as a liminal state of mind orders chaos, and integrates stored memories as well as accommodating and assimilate these into scripts (Schank), which are the inner conversations we hold with ourselves that guide our social interactions and emotional responses and form the basis of metaphor and simile in our thinking. Stories are also a way of knowing, understanding and re-membering information and experiences into shapes or patterns. My main focus was and is on the relationship between storytelling and community building, the most important aspect is that liminality provided through storytelling provides a charter for individual behaviour, and by extension, for communal social behaviour (Masuyama) without proscription. Throughout human history Storytelling has been something we share in families, groups, teams and communities. Sharing stories synchronises our brain activity. When we hear a story as a couple, a family, a business team or a community our brains harmonise through the storytelling. That means, if we receive an idea through storytelling, we get inside the idea together. This is comparable to and orchestra, when it synchronises the individual skills and instruments to interpret the idea of the whole symphony to creates a moving piece of music in which everyone a has a part.

Storytelling is our magic wand that brings everyone onto the same page without compromising or suppressing individuality. When we synchronise our minds through a story, we feel the idea together as if we were experiencing it in real life. The story and the idea become ours. Storytelling is the most effective and ethical way to plant ideas into our fertile minds, because the brain areas we activated through storytelling are those we use to understand others and to feel compassion.

To my inherited oral storytelling skills, I added formal studies in visual art, storytelling, speech formation and dramatic art (Europe), a B.A. and B.A. hon. in creative writing and a Ph.D. on storytelling and community building (Australia).

My spiritual background is Anthroposophy; I encountered Steiner’s body of work as an 18 year-old in Germany and became a member of the Society in 1982. I joined the School of Spiritual Science in 1988.

 

EDUCATION

PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore,  2007 – 2012

Bachelor of Arts, Honours, University of New England, Armidale,  2004

Bachelor of Arts, Southern Cross University, Lismore, 1999 – 2002

Study of Dramatic Art, Recitation, Storytelling, Bildungsstätte für Sprächende Kunst, Köngen, Germany (Academy for Spoken and Dramatic Art), 1985 – 1989

Study of Visual Art and Art Theory, Mahlschule Brigitte Ketterlinus, Stuttgart (Brigitte Ketterlinus School of Visual Arts), 1983 – 1984

 

CURRENT WORK

PREPARATION for Heartwood Siteworks Conference: The Nature of Evil and the Challenge to be Fully Human (11 – 14 June, 2021)

PREPARATION for Storytelling workshops in NSW, QLD, SA in 2021 for the following themes:

Meeting the Devil’s Grandmother; Building Resilient, Collaborative Communities (Two-day workshop)

Healing Anfortas, Wearing the Bearskin; Storying Post-Traumatic Stress (Three-day seminar)

Bathing in the Well of Being – Reclaiming Our Skin; Regrowing Our Hands. A Three-day Work for Women

The Wisdom of the ‘Wicked’ Witch & The Helpful ‘Evil’ Stepmother – A Seminar in Four Parts

 

STORYTELLING SHORT COURSES (Accredited)

Telling the Difference: A Story Seminar for Teachers and Educators

40 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Registered PD

 

The Voice in Which it is Told; An Introduction: The Importance of the Human Voice in Life Stories, Oral-Social History and Folktales

40 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) PD (Registration pending)

 

YARNING CIRCLES IN COLLABORATION WITH FIRST PEOPLE ELDERS

2020 WELL OF TEARS: VISIONS OF HOPE, Canberra (postponed due to COVID)

2019 Water Yarning – Tidings, Flows and Sorrows, Corindi

2019 Creative Spirit; Healing the Land, Healing the People, Canberra

2018 Listening to Country: Understanding the Sovereignty of Indigenous Knowledge; Building Respect for Country and Original Custodians, Mullumbimby

 

RESEARCH

Storytelling and the liminal space and how this builds community, social justice and resilience

Crossing Threshold, Liminal Space as Threshold Experience; Storytelling; a way to consciously cross into the Spiritual World

Indigenous Storytelling as Lore/Law

Re-Imagining our cultural roots through myth-making and story work

Seven Sisters; Pleiades; Daughters of the Night, Matariki, The Seven Hathors, et al: following the stars and their stories in their dance across the hemispheres

 

COURSES AND PROJECTS

2019 The Magic of the Liminal Space – Teacher Professional Development Seminar, Lorien Novalis, Dural

2018 – ongoing External Associate, George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling, Glamorgan, Wales

2017 – ongoing Founder of Abundance, A Celebration of Generosity 2017

2016 – ongoing Founding Director Heartwood, Site for Transformative Arts, Culture, Science

2015 Spinning Tomorrow’s Light, Storytelling Intensive for Tellers, Educators, Practitioners & Change-Makers (collaboration)

2014 – ongoing Wise Women Story Circle

2013 Coordinator Inaugural Café Readings Fringe Event, Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival

2013 – ongoing Founder and Coordinator of the Inaugural Grassroots Writers Weekend, in conjunction with the NRWC and Regional Writers Groups

2012 Coordinator World Storytelling Day Celebration, Coffs Harbour

2004 – ongoing Founder and Coordinator of the Dorrigo Writers Group

PUBLICATIONS

Curteis, I. ‘The Voice in Which it is Told: The Importance of the Human Voice in Life Stories and Folktales’ in International Journal of the Arts in Society, Eds. Bill Cope, Mary Kalantziz, Vol. 5, Issue 5, University of Illinois Research Park, Champaign, Illinois, 2011, pp. 237–252.

Curteis, I. ‘The Hindrance of Holding a Raw Egg: Storytelling and the Liminal Space’ in Local-Global, ReGenerating Community, Eds. Martin Mulligan, Kim Dunphy, Vol. 7, RMIT, Melbourne, 2010, pp. 150–164.

Curteis, I. ‘Letters to a Friend’ in Coastlines 2: New Writings from Southern Cross, Eds. Iris Curteis, Shé Hawke, Denny Prussian, acqui Reid, Ché Yarrow, Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2001, pp. 313 – 33

Curteis, I. ‘The Sapling’ in Coastlines 2: New Writings from Southern Cross Eds. Iris Curteis, Shé Hawke, Denny Prussian, Jacqui Reid, Ché Yarrow, Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2001, p. 185

Curteis, I. ‘Seeking Taliesin’ in Coastlines 2: New Writings from Southern Cross Eds. Iris Curteis, Shé Hawke, Denny Prussian, acqui Reid, Ché Yarrow, Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2001, p. 199

 

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS

Contact: 

an_lomall@bigpond.com

 www.storyvisionsource.com

Seminar Brochure: Telling the Difference Seminar