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Timpanogos Storytelling Festival


The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival takes place Labor Day weekend at the end of each summer in Orem, Utah. The main festival and its smaller cousin, the Timpanogos Storytelling Midwinter Conference, draw a combined attendance of about 26,000 people each year, making it the largest storytelling festival in the western United States. The festival typically lasts two days and invites professional storytellers from throughout the United States. Some of the nation's best known storytellers unite with other tellers, both young and old, for two all-day celebrations of music, merriment, but mostly stories. In addition to daytime performances held at Mt. Timpanogos Park in Provo Canyon on Friday and Saturday, there are typically public performances in the evenings, such as "Look Who's Talking, "Bedtime Stories," "My Favorite Stories" and "Laughin' Night." Before the main Festival begins, attendees may also attend storytelling workshops held on Thursday morning and afternoon at the Orem Public Library, given by four of the featured storytellers.

The bulk of the summer festival is held in the Mount Timpanogos Park, a 44-acre (180,000 m2) park designed in part to accommodate the needs of the festival. The park is approximately one mile up Provo Canyon, and sits at the foot of Mount Timpanogos. Laughing Night, the final event of the festival, is usually performed at the SCERA Shell, an outdoor amphitheater where the audience sits on a large, sloped lawn around a central stage.

The Idea-In 1989, Karen Ashton, President of the Friends of the Orem Public Library, was looking for projects to promote community involvement in the Library. Mrs. Ashton had been volunteering at the Library for years, presenting Storytime for preschoolers and helping with other Children's Library programs. When she saw an advertisement for a National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee, she decided to attend and gather more ideas for stories and programs for the Orem Library.

She went to the National Festival expecting to find ladies telling stories to children in a library. Instead she found thousands of adults crowding into tents, listening to dynamic performers relating tales of history, culture, folk and family life, as well as magical stories of “what if . . .!” The entire town of Jonesborough (population 3,000) had mobilized to accommodate the 10,000+ people who annually attend the three-day festival.


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