For the last twenty years I have been developing an approach to communication development - Lis’n Tell: Live Inclusive Storytelling. During the last fifteen years I have trained scores of teachers, parents and therapists in this imaginative and versatile yet practical method of storytelling which enables and develops spontaneous intentional communication. I have worked with thousands of children with and without learning challenges in the UK, Nova Scotia and France, and have run workshops for adults in Australia, Canada, Germany, Singapore and England.

Last autumn, in 2008 I started teaching Lis’n Tell at Greenwich Medway University to postgraduate students of Speech Pathology and Therapeutics. I have also taught Lis’n Tell to MA Drama students at Canterbury University, and recently trained ministerial and lay staff in the Diocese of Canterbury.

My work has been featured on Radio Kent, and in Special Children Magazine.

My two one woman shows: ‘Back to Back with Frida Kahlo’ and ‘The Foibles and Fables of Miss Coigley’ have played at National Arts(The Brighton Fringe and Canterbury), Storytelling and community festivals.

I am currently writing up my research into storytelling conducted with Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

I worked intermittently for two years with Nicola Grove and the Unlimited Company.

This summer I will be doing a storytelling residency in a school for children with physical disabilities in Kent.

In August I’ll be performing’’It was a Dark and Stormy Night’’ with my colleague, Danya Miller at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, following a tour of the Midlands in May which is supported by the Arts Council.

I run regular national Lis’n Tell training days and weekends and present at SIGs and conferences.

I find that storytelling is as much about listening as telling and my favourite quote at the moment is: ‘’When the personal is not separate from the collective, your spirit is not separate from your body and you as a performer are not separate from your audience, then true art can happen or ‘duende’ as they say in Spanish, or ‘tarab’ as they say in Arabic’’. - Reem Kelani