Searching for our Magical Beings

I grew up in Scotland, a country with a strong storytelling-culture. Hidden in the landscape, live all sorts of magical beings: Mermaids, fairies, the Loch Ness Monster. We have something called “Storytelling Walks”. Here, the storyteller takes you on a walk, stops at certain points and tells a story of the magical creature living there. They might suddenly stop and say: “Look! That branch up there! That is where the old wizard sits at midnight! Let me tell you a story about him”. All over the world cultures imagine magical beings in their landscapes. In Benin (Africa) the Aziza live, forrest-fairies with butterfly-wings, in the Phillipines we have the the 'Nuna sa Punso', a grumpy gnome, who lives under anthills. In Iceland we have a real official "Fairy Minister", who checks, if fairies live in the landscape, before a house or road is allowed to be built. I believe this type of storytelling develops a special kind of relationship with nature that is defined by mindfulness and respect. Something that is getting more and more lost in our industrial society.

My Solution

Since 2024 I have developed a project I call "Searching for our Magical Beings". I travel to places and "find" the magical beings living there, with the help of the local community. It is comprised of following steps:

Step 1: Workshops

I invite the community to join me on “Storytelling Walks”. They are interactive workshops, in which participants go on a walk with me and get to create stories along the way. I guide the participants through the process, with exercises similar to those of a theatre-improvisation-class. The walk might start at an old tree, where someone improvises a story about a tree-ghost and might end at a pond with a story about the pond-mermaid.

Step 2: Music

Using these stories by the participants, I create songs about the specific places and their magical inhabitants. I use soundscape-recordings and the method of creating sound through plants and electric currents (e.g: playing on tulips). 

Step 3: Presentation

I end the project with a “Concert Walk”. We take a walk and along the way I perform the songs.

Step 4: Publishing

In the future I plan to publish the songs on my website with an interactive map of all magical beings.

So far I have completed this project in Germany. 2025 I will be continueing it with school-classes, family-groups and adult-groups in city-parks, at festivals and in remote countryside-areas. In my experience, the magical creatures and their stories stay long after the project is over. Families taking walks will point them out to each other “Do you remember grandchild? Isn’t that where the flute-playing fairy lives?” The stories are naturally elaborated over time and they stay as an immaterial cultural property belonging to the community.

NOTE: The project can be easily adapted to your needs. For example, it is possible to involve participants in each step, including the song-writing and performing of the songs.