ConferenceTexas Summer Storytelling Conference

July 8-10, 2011 • San Antonio

Sustaining the Flame:
Stories Fuel Life and Learning

A Conference on Burnout Prevention ... and More!
Featuring Bill Harley and Elizabeth Ellis

A NSN Year of the Regions Event

 

 

Click to view the slideshow

 

SUSTAINING THE FLAME:
Stories Fuel Life and Learning

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from
another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude
of those who have lighted the flame within us.--Albert Schweitzer

 

We storytellers, we teachers, we librarians, we ministers, we lovers of the oral tradition... we are blessed to be able to live passionately within our callings, but does this ever happen to you: your flame flickers and pales and almost goes out. Burnout, it is called. Whether for loss of the muse or the oppression of bureaucracy or the wavering of an organization that has lost its way, you are parched.

For some, it is deadly; for some, the danger passes but leaves the fear that it could return and, next time, smother our very beings. When that happens, can we re-ignite our creative powers? Can we keep the spark alive? How can we sustain the flame?

 

TSA decided to ask those questions to two storytellers who have been in the field for over three decades and who still feel passionate about their work: Elizabeth Ellis and Bill Harley. Both generate new stories, novel outlooks and fresh perspectives, with no end in sight and each creation richer than the one before. Do they have secrets to share? Can they rekindle our sparks? Can we rekindle each other's?

 

That is what the 2011 Tejas Storytelling Conference will be about. Just so you know.

 

The Texas Summer Storytelling Conference iss sponsored in part by:

UTSA
This conference is co-sponsored by the UTSA College of Education and Human Development, UTSA's Department of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning, and Gemini Ink.  It is made possible in part by grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts; the National Storytelling Network, and Humanities Texas, the state affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.