This was my third trip to Singapore and it’s starting to feel like home. So many people I’ve grown close to with so many shared interests and so many spectacular galleries and museums. I leave now anticipating my return.

There were many highlights but meeting up with the outreach team and volunteers at Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve to share ideas for community engagement AND delivering gifts from our patch - the Hobsons Bay Wetlands Centre - was right up there.

It was a blast delivering the gifts from Australia and a double blast returning with gifts from Buloh for Hobsons Bay

So as if my cup wasn’t already overflowing, after Sungei Buloh, my friend Tham Pui San (Chair of the Friends of Sungei Buloh), arranged for a visit to the Seed Bank at the Singapore Botanic Gardens where I had the fun of sharing the story of the Amazing Case of Dr Ward.

Oh it was all a bit fantastic really. I learned a mountain of things, was enriched with conversation, tickled by much fun and hilarity and heart warmed by the energy of people working for the environment.

I have returned home full of stories and warmed by the generosity and hospitality of Singapore.

When my friend and colleague, Anna Manuel of Heads and Tales Story Services and I decided to pitch a couple of workshops to the FEAST conference in Bengaluru, we didn’t expect that both would be accepted.

Passionate kamishibai storytellers, we presented our favourite Kamishibai 101 workshop and equally passionate about language enrichment with oral storytelling enhanced with simple props like paper and string and body percussion, we offered Nearly Naked Storytelling.

The two day conference ticked over like a Swiss watch. The venue was perfect. Taking place in the Chancery Hotel where participants were residing, the staff could not have been more supportive.

To my delight the hotel was also located near Cubbon Park, 300 hectares of green, full of wildlife. Hard to see in the photo but those trees are full of Indian Palm Squirrels chirping incessantly, the sky is thick with circling fork-tailed kites and darting ring-necked parrots. About 100 metres along this path there is a swampy patch thick with butterflies, dragonflies and bees.

My sincere thanks to the FEAST Conference committee for bringing this amazing gathering of storytellers together: India, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Italy, the UK, USA, Australia - apologies if I’ve left any one out. Absolutely impossible task getting a photo of this riotous group of people - the talking never ceased!

The 2020 conference will be held in Indonesia.

When my good friend and colleague, Anna Manuel of Heads and Tales Story Services, moved back to Bangkok, we were both disappointed. We worried that distance would put an end to our collaborations. But we held on to the idea that with careful planning we could find a way to continue our adventures if we applied ourselves to the task.

When the Federation of Asian Story Tellers Conference announced they were open to submissions, we saw this as a chance to work together again and to share with others some of the the work that had been exciting us.

The conference was to be in Bengaluru in India but we began work in her school in Bangkok, Thailand.

The Outdoor School Bangkok (OSB) is small and growing. Nestled away from the noisy streets, in an old house surrounded by garden and shaded by a huge mango tree, the OSB values being outside and away for constant air conditioning. Anna works mostly with the youngest students and spends a proportion of time with the older ones.

It’s always a privilege to be made welcome in a school and invited to participate in the program. But to be included so wholeheartedly in place so far away from home, was especially wonderful.

As well as working with stories with the children during class time, we ran a kamishibai workshop for educators.

I’m never entirely sure who has more fun at these workshops, Anna and I or the participants. Once the introductions are over, it seems people just get on with it and are always so inventive and often hilarious. I’m not sure what it is, but kamisbiai storytelling seems to tap into creative brain space like no other.