Availability
Katherine is available both on weekdays (and evenings) and weekends, for performances and workshops.
Rates
Rates vary with your needs and circumstances.
Contact
grier.katherine@gmail.com
Katherine Grier
Katherine has been telling stories formally for the past forty years at events such as the Toronto, St. John’s and Ottawa Storytelling Festivals, the Ottawa Storytellers’ Epic Stories from the Ages series, and the NAC’s 4th Stage series – also in libraries, cafes, community centres, and prisons. She has told frequently to young people in the schools through MASC and the Ontario Arts Council/Artists in Education Program and to senior citizens through the MASC Seniors’ Program.
As co-founder and original co-director of the Parent-Child Mother Goose Program (a prevention and enrichment program based on storytelling and oral-language play), Katherine has worked extensively with parents and their pre-school children and has facilitated many training workshops on storytelling and program delivery.
She and actor/director Eleanor Crowder developed the Family Album Project, through which they worked with adult immigrants, using personal storytelling to help dissolve barriers to integration and belonging. She has also led workshops for Bereaved Families of Ontario/Ottawa, helping those who are further along in coming to terms with their loss tell their stories to support people who are newly bereaved. She is currently on the artist roster of Radical Connections, an innovative project run through the Bruyère Centre which is making the arts widely accessible in healthcare through ‘Healing Interactive Performances.’
Material
Katherine’s repertoire is made up of traditional stories with their distilled wisdom – folktales, legends, and myths – as well as stories shaped from her own and others’ experiences. She loves stories of transformation, journeying and honest trickery; she values clear language, strong images and an undercurrent of humour; and she is interested in the way stories allow us to explore our own experience, consciously or not. Katherine tells to people of all ages, from pre-schoolers to seniors.
“Katherine Grier finds stories that touch us – heart and soul – and tells them in a clear, kind voice full of peace, honesty, richness and gentle humour. Fortunate are those who have an opportunity to hear them.”
Elinor Benjamin,
Storyteller & retired Asst. Regional Librarian, West Nfld/Labr. Division, Prov. Public Libraries
“Katherine is a highly skilled and effective storyteller and teacher. The students were just as impressed with her, as she managed to captivate and engage all of them in her stories and in the activities that followed. We even had comments from parents that their children had come home and recounted the stories she had told in great detail.”
Sharon Hickey-Sano, teacher, Churchill Alternative School, Ottawa