Fiona Dowling

Stories communicate something important about being human that bypasses the logical mind and touches our very soul. My favorite stories are ones that combine mystery, wisdom and humour. I love storytelling because it is such a simple, warm and intimate medium and it creates a sense of community. I believe in the power of stories to help us find our place in the world and bring us back to essentials: how to live and how to love.

Fiona has been telling stories to young and old, in French or English, and in such diverse venues as storytelling clubs, hotels, libraries, cafes... She also performed at the Mosney Refugee Centre in County Louth, Droichead Art Centre in Drogheda, Kilruddery House and Garden in Bray, and in Dublin: the Talbot Street Gallery, the Dublin Food Coop, Trinity College, the Irish Writer's Centre, Temple Street Children's Hospital as part of the Helium Project and more recently in the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, with Clare Muireann Murphy. Fiona has also taken part in Storytelling in Education projects such as the "Story Spark" season of stories at the Ark in December 2010.

In October 2010 she was a featured teller at the Mohill Storytelling Festival. This coming month she will travel to the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris to tell stories in French and English to children from bilingual families. Fiona also performs with storytellers Michael Phelan, Eleonore Nicolas, Nina Tanis and Adam Wilson as "Story-O". The group is planning several storytelling events in Dublin for the coming months.

Clíona O'Carroll

Dr. Clíona O'Carroll has been a Lecturer with Béaloideas/Folklore and Ethnology since 2004. Her research interests include material culture, maritime folklore, migrant experiences, public folklore, ethnographic methodology, and doing ethnography for broadcast. She is Research Director with the community-based Cork Northside Folklore Project http://www.ucc.ie/research/nfp/, and directs their Memory Map Project.

After receiving a BA in An Léann Dúchais and Sociology, Clíona studied in the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, with support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The ethnographic research for her Doctoral thesis was carried out in Berlin, where she investigated experiences of migrancy and performances of Irishness with Irish migrants and the host society. She was awarded a PhD in Folklore and Ethnology from UCC in 2001. She participates in and advises a range of public folklore projects, gives ethnographic/folklore fieldwork training to a number of groups, and has researched and produced a number of ethnographic radio series.

Gerry Clancy

B.Sc NUI Galway, M.Sc Advanced Manufacturing Systems Brunel University Regular Storyteller at Cork and Dublin Yarnspinners. One of the featured Sorytellers on the "Dublin Yarnspinners Celebrating 15 years" CD launched April 2011.

Part of the "Cape Clear International Storytelling Festival Committee". Taught Science and Engineering to children aged 6 to 8, and 8 to 13 years old as part of the DCU Irish Centre for Talented Youth Programme at UCC for a number of years. Principal Consultant at Cascade Consultancy specialising in Safety, Quality improvement and Environmental Mangement for SME's in Ireland.

Michel Schellekens

Illustrating gyroscopic balance on a unicycle. Gyroscopes are used in helicopters, the wii-motion plus and iPhones

PhD Carnegie Mellon University, Professor in Computer Science Department UCC, Director of CEOL Center for Efficiency-Oriented Languages (CEOL), SFI Principal Investigator, Marie Curie Fellow and Daad Alumni. Former affiliations include VUB, University of Siegen and Imperial College London.

Storytelling experience: member of the storytellers club in Pittsburgh and participant in several of Cape Clear's outstanding storytelling workshops (by Michael Parent, Jan Blake, and Carol Russell, master storytellers in residence). He performed for children in libraries, on stage in Cork's Yarnspinner's club and was shortlisted for the 2011 International storytelling Competition of Listowel's Writer's week (as was Fiona Dowling).

Nina Tanis

Nina Tanis (USA) graduated from NCAD with a Fine Art degree in sculpture and belongs to the storytelling troupe StoryO. She hopes that somewhere between her telling and her audience listening is a space that allows for suspension of present time and place. She brings you to this place with tales of man and child, love and luck, behavior and attitude, kingdoms and castles, seeking and finding...or not, so that we may be entertained while contemplating our humanity; reflecting on whom we are, who we may wish to be or hope never to become.