Storytelling Center

Resilience through Narrative

The Seraj Library and Storytelling Center in Kufor Aqab is a community space dedicated to the art of storytelling in Palestine. The Center provides space and resources for people to read, learn, create, celebrate, and gather, including a children’s library, a workshop space, and an open kitchen. Read more about the Center’s many programs below.

The Seraj Storytelling Academy is a 3-year course through which students learn to collect, curate, and perform their stories.

  • In collecting stories, we know ourselves and one another more deeply. 
  • In curating stories, we heal, root, and design. 
  • In performing stories, we share, build, and connect.
The foundation of the program is a 300-page curriculum on the history and art of storytelling in Palestine, the first of its kind.

The Yoga & Storytelling program blends Kundalini Yoga with the art of storytelling. 

Yoga is a deep and enriching practice that helps release tension, anxiety, and stuck emotions. Through breathing, meditation, and relaxation, participants are able to relax in a safe and supportive environment and engage in one of the oldest forms of folk art, storytelling. Remembering and sharing their stories promotes self-expression, emotional release, and healing from trauma.

The Annual Storytelling Marathon trains a new generation of leaders in ancient oral traditions, ensuring that stories that embody resilience and heritage are not lost.

As young men and women learn the ancient art of storytelling, they perform and compete throughout their local communities in an process of cultural affirmation. Last year this event united over 280 children from across Palestine. They shared 473 stories with an audience of more than 124,000 people—the largest storytelling event in our history.

Layali Ramadaniye is the Ramadan Nights Storytelling Festival, in which storytellers and musicians travel to each of our libraries and partner communities to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.

It has been a tradition for more than a thousand years to observe the breaking of the Ramadan fast with story and song. It’s a chance for families to laugh, sing and enjoy as generations before did, without TVs, phones or video games.

The Seraj Storytelling Center hosted the first International Storytelling Festival in Palestine, with performances by professional Palestinian storytellers as well as storytellers from Italy, England, Ghana and the U.S.

Since then, members of the Seraj Storytelling Academy have traveled to other host countries, broadening their horizons and enriching their artistic practice. This festival highlights the importance of fairy tales, folk tales, and wonder tales in honor of our ancestors and the oral traditions kept by women for thousands of years.

The Art of Storytelling Conference was inspired in part by the work of Hanna Salmon. Her words capture the spirit and importance of the Seraj Storytelling Center. 

She is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies Palestinian storytelling as an atmospheric practice and mode of artistic resistance in the West Bank and among the diaspora. 

The Seraj Ancestors' Garden at the Storytelling Center bustles with life. Community members grow flowers and herbs that are culturally significant, fostering a connection to the land and traditions. Visit the garden in this short video.

More Videos from the Storytelling Center 

In collecting our stories, we know ourselves and one another more deeply.
As we collect stories from other members of our communities, we learn of the stories that have shaped the lives of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones. Whether we gather personal stories or folk tales, the process of collecting stories allows us to spend time with one another in conversation about the memories that make us who we are as individuals and communities. Academy student Ola noticed that her visits to her older neighbors in Kufor ‘Aqab brought them happiness: “They wear their best clothes, and get themselves ready, and they sit waiting, waiting… So I felt that the visit itself, that we came to speak with them and listen to their stories, this by itself made them happy,” (June 5th 2023). Through sharing our memories and offering the space and care to listen, we build new relationships and strengthen existing ones, affirming that peoples’ stories – including our own – are valuable, worth telling, and worth listening to. 
	
In curating our stories, we heal, root, and design.
Storytelling is a tool for healing from trauma by meditating on our memories, both good and bad. As storytellers curate the stories from our own lives into the versions we will tell, we process the joys and pains of our lives. In the words of Storytelling Academy student Basma, “When I tell, I heal” (June 6th 2023). By analyzing the stories we collect from ourselves and our communities, storytellers develop meaningful knowledge of Palestinian folkloric stories and personal narratives that strengthens the roots that tie Palestinian communities to each other, their history, and their heritage. At the same time, as storytellers engage deeply with the themes present in the stories they curate, we meditate on our beliefs and the values we want to build our futures on. What does it mean to be a Palestinian woman in 2023? What are the ideals that will help to build a strong Palestinian society in the future? We explore the answers to these questions through storytelling.
In performing our stories, we share, build, and connect.
When storytellers tell, we express our inner world, sharing ourselves with the people around us and opening the door for deeper connection. We place our personal memories into collective repertoires, strengthening the foundation for communal ties by sharing experiences we might hold in common. When we perform the folk tales we collect from our communities, we ensure that they are not forgotten as time passes, maintaining the heritage of Palestinian tales for new generations. In telling, storytellers can advocate for the values they meditate on through the curation process, sharing their message and building networks of solidarity to support one another in that advocacy. As academy student Maha noted, the events at the Center provide an important “opportunity for us to listen to the stories of the people, and for people to listen to our stories” (June 5th 2023). Through these events, the Storytelling Center has built a beautiful community of storytellers, professional and natural, who lend one another strength, confidence, and support in the art of storytelling and in their daily lives. 

Remembering Cotton Fite

The Storytelling Center was established in loving memory of Dr. Cotton Fite, a Seraj/U.S. Board Chair, inspiring leader and a beloved friend to the entire Seraj community.