Speak Up at CMCH: Beginner Storytelling Workshop with Speak Up co-Founder Matthew Dicks

Speak Up co-founder and 38-time Moth StorySLAM winner and 6-time GrandSLAM champion Matthew Dicks will be teaching a day-long workshop on the art of storytelling. This is a workshop designed for a wide range of people, including those with little or no previous storytelling experience.

While many workshop graduates have gone on to tell stories on stage for Speak Up, The Moth, and other storytelling organizations, many students take this beginner-level workshop with little or no desire to ever take the stage. They want to learn about storytelling for personal and professional development, to meet new people, to improve communication skills, to develop their writing ability, to challenge themselves, to finally get the attention of grandchildren, colleagues, or that special someone, or to simply try something new.

Included in this workshop will be:
• Methods for finding stories in your own life, including exercises and systems by which these stories can continue to be found and collected long after the workshop is finished
• Crafting stories, including finding compelling arcs and the appropriate use of stakes, description, suspense, dialogue, and more
• Permissible, recommended “lies” of storytelling
• The cinema of storytelling
• The strategic use of humor in storytelling
• Performance techniques

This is a no-risk, low stakes introduction to storytelling that does not require students to tell stories or even speak if that’s what they prefer. If you’d like to dip a toe into storytelling and learn some of the most effective, easiest applied strategies to the finding and crafting of stories but you’re not yet ready to stand before an audience and speak, this workshop is a safe place for you to learn.

Due to the amount of information presented, there is very limited opportunity for participants to present stories of their own.

$85 CMCH members, $95 non-members. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. Tickets can be purchased here.

Lunch is not included, but there is a lunch break. Bring your own or ask CMCH staff about local eateries.