Online Zoom Forum: Therapeutic Storytelling: Towards Transformation, Healing, and Renewal.
Date: Wednesday 4 March 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Dr Donald Smith:
Bio: Donald Smith is founding Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre and of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.
Donald Smith is a noted storyteller and performance poet in his own right, novelist, and playwright; and has authored a succession of books about Scottish culture, including Storytelling Scotland (2001) and Freedom and Faith (2013).
From 2012 to 2023 he was CEO of TRACS (Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland).
Donald was born in Glasgow to an Irish mother, and was brought up in Church of Scotland manses in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.
In 2023 he was honoured to receive the Hamish Henderson Award for lifetime achievement.
Speakers:
Dr Michael Williams:
Title: Where the Wound Meets the Word: Memoir as a Path to Healing.
Description: In this talk, Dr. Michael Williams explores how writing our life stories can become a gentle yet transformative act of healing. Drawing on insights from guided autobiography, therapeutic storytelling, and memoir practice, he reveals how language helps us give shape to pain, make meaning from experience, and rediscover wholeness. Through story, reflection, and shared humanity, we find our words can both remember and restore.
Bio: Dr Michael Williams is a certified Guided Autobiography Instructor, memoir-writing coach, storyteller. He's also the founder of Memoir Studio (memoirstudio.ca), where he helps individuals transform memory into meaning. A former educator with a Ph.D. in English Literature and an accredited end-of-life planning facilitator, Dr Williams specializes in the therapeutic and spiritual dimensions of life writing. His work blends narrative craft with reflective practice to guide others toward healing, insight, and legacy through story.
Dr Alida Gersie:
Title: Other-help: Therapeutic Storytelling and our Better Angels.
Description: Storytelling is neither intrinsically good nor bad, supportive nor discouraging. It is, just like a pair of scissors, an important instrument in the hands of a dedicated teller. The health-promoting joy of therapeutic storytelling emerges in the interactions between teller(s), listener(s), each story-in-the-telling, and above all the unique telling-context. The process of emergence reveals the entangled connectivity between people’s hopes, dreams, experiences, creativity, history and their ethical guard-rails. In this contribution I will focus on some memorable lessons that taught me how best to increase the chances that my attempts at therapeutic storytelling might have an enduring, or in plain English a more than a momentary, revitalizing effect. ?
Bio: Alida Gersie PhD is a London-based organization consultant, arts therapist (HCPC), brief psychotherapist (M.R.I.) and writer. After many years of groundbreaking work in community development, arts in health and applied arts she became a senior academic. In this role she designed and directed innovative postgraduate courses in the arts therapies and ‘arts in health’ at Universities in the UK and abroad. Her approach (since the 1970s) to the uses of therapeutic storymaking and storytelling to support children’s and adult’s recovery from the health impacts of cross-generational deprivation, complex bereavement, trauma and environmental loss is internationally renowned. She is the author of acclaimed, translated books, including: Storymaking in Education and Therapy (with Nancy King), Storymaking in Bereavement, Reflections on Therapeutic Storymaking: The use of Stories in Groups, and Storytelling for Nature Connection (with Anthony Nason and Edward Schieffelin). She offers consultancy to senior staff in the arts, health, education and environmental regeneration. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dr Sue Jennings:
Title: That’s Just a Story! The Importance of Believing Children’s Stories.
Description: The stories that children tell are always true at some level. They may not be literally true but they carry important truths within them. My talk is based on personal experience of the damage caused when adults impose narratives on children whether at home, school or in therapy. It can be uncomfortable to hear the story that the child needs to tell, nevertheless it is the child’s story to which we need to pay attention!
Bio: Sue Jennings has pioneered dramatherapy in many countries and is currently pre-occupied with training in Neuro-Dramatic-Play (NDP), a unique system for early child-hood intervention. NDP integrates several forms of play and storytelling, which build confidence and instil the importance of performative play for confidence and self-esteem. Her doctoral fieldwork with the Temiar tribal peoples in the rainforest of Malaysia has influenced her work, especially in the areas of collaborative play and child-centred communities. She is a prolific author of over fifty books of theory and practice. She emphasises the importance of social anthropology in understanding development and human needs. Her latest publication is joint editor of The Handbook of Neuro-Dramatic-Play, (Routledge 2025) which she regards as a significant landmark in the growth of NDP.
Nancy Mellon:
Title: Peacemaker Wisdom: Masterly Guidance from an Ancient Sacred Saga.
Bio: Nancy Mellon grew up on indigenous lands where warring tribes have maintained centuries of peaceful living together. Let us explore together their path of transformation.
Nancy Mellon has taught storytelling as a healing art internationally for many years. Her books are widely cherished in several languages. Kindly visit her website at www.healingstory.com
Susan Perrow:
Title: Whispers of Hope and Healing.
Description: In this short presentation Susan will share examples of storytelling with families living in war zones in Ukraine and the Middle East. She will then draw on these examples to discuss the power of metaphor and imaginative journeys in therapeutic stories – stories that have helped build resilience and offered whispers of hope for children, teens and adults in extremely difficult times and situations.
Bio: Susan is an Australian author who works with 'story medicine'. She writes, collects and documents stories that offer a therapeutic journey – a positive, imaginative way of addressing challenging behaviours and traumatic situations, including environmental grief and loss.
In 2000 she developed a 150-hour unit on Storytelling for Southern Cross University (NSW, Australia) and completed her Master’s Research on Storytelling in a cross-cultural situation, post-apartheid South Africa. From 2001 to 2003, as the coordinator of a pilot program funded by the Australian Government under its “Developing Stronger Families” Project, she developed courses and resources for Parent Support, specialising in therapeutic storytelling.
For the last 20 years Susan has had the privilege of travelling internationally giving keynotes and seminars for teachers, parents and therapists (now online) – in Europe, the US, the UK, Asia and China, and in 2025 in Central and South America.
Her work has led to the publication of four resource books, all by Hawthorn Press U.K., and now in 14 languages - ‘- ‘Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour’, ‘Therapeutic Storytelling: 101 Healing Stories for Children’, ‘An A-Z Collection of Behaviour Tales’ and ‘Stories to Light the Night: A Grief and Loss Collection for Children, Families and Communities’.
In 2023 she launched her first audio APP for smartphones and tablets. Entitled ‘RainbowTales.app’ it offers 101 therapeutic stories told by professional narrators across six sections.
A mother of three sons, and a grandmother of six, her home is in Lennox Head on the East Coast of Australia.
Website: www.susanperrow.com INST:https://www.instagram.com/susanperrow_author/ FB:https://www.facebook.com/healingthroughstories/
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Booking: By Paypal.
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
If you are having a difficulty paying by Paypal, then you can pay by bank transfer instead.
NB: you must also email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can send you the Zoom sign-in details.
Here are the bank transfer details:
Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
Bank: Bank of Scotland
Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
Sort Code: 802000
Some international transfers also ask for an IBAN number:
The IBAN number:
GB70 BOFS 8020 0006 1311 59
BIC:
BOFSGB21168