Society for Storytelling

Storyteller Directory: Mike O’Connor

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Name: Mike O’Connor

Location: Cornwall

County: Cornwall

Telephone: 01841 540042

Email: moconnor@ision.co.uk

Website: http://www.lyngham.co.uk

Mike is a friendly, approachable and highly experienced performer and workshop leader, used to working with adults and children both in performance situations and in educational and community work. He has been working as a musician since the 1970s and a story teller since the 1990s. He has worked in arts centres, at festivals, in schools, community halls and private venues. He has been a resident storyteller for the Forestry Commission, and is currently working at the Institute of Cornish Studies, Exeter University.

Brought up in Wales and London, he lived in Scotland for many years before moving to Cornwall twenty years ago. He has travelled widely researching his material. In Southern Africa he followed the footsteps of Laurens van der Post and in Wales those of naturalist Ludwig Koch. He followed the course of Sir Francis Chichester across the Indian Ocean. He has charmed snakes in Singapore and the Bahamas, and called seals in Orkney and Cornwall.

Mike has made many recordings and radio broadcasts, and has written for learned journals and popular magazines on subjects relating to folklore.

Mike’s tales vary from 5 minute fireside tales to epics such as Tristan and Iseult, Imravoe, the Tales of the Holy Rood, and Loki.

For his work Mike is honoured to have been awarded the OBE and has been made a bard of the Gorsedd of Cornwall.

• Performs indoors
• Performs outdoors
• Performs to adults
• Performs to audiences over 100 in number
• Performs to primary age children
• Performs to secondary age children
• Performs to senior citizens
• Runs workshops for adults
• Runs workshops for children
• Travels anywhere in the U.K.
• Works in other art forms