Growing up, Maralyn Elliss went to 10 different schools around Australia.

As a result, it took teachers a while each time to realise she couldn’t read.

“I wasn’t actually reading, I was learning it and saying it,” Ms Elliss said.

“I’d get [my brother] or mum or somebody to read [my homework] to me, thinking I would just learn it.

“I got through school on my memory — I couldn’t spell to save my life.”

Maralyn Elliss has always struggled to read and write, but being part of Storytelling Australia means she can share her stories.  (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)

“I absolutely hated having to stand up in front of the class, my brain would go to mush.

“Even now, if somebody gave me something to read, I couldn’t do it.

“But if they gave it to me the day before and said, ‘Hey, learn this’, I could get up and just say it.”

Her friend, Gaynor Jackson, who also has dyslexia, had a similarly difficult time at school.

“In year 11 … we had to start a story and my teacher said to me, ‘what are you going to write today?’, and I told her about a story,” Ms Jackson said.

Gaynor Jackson coordinates Storytelling Australia SA’s Wallaroo branch. (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)

“I went and wrote a story, and when I went back to her, she said, ‘I don’t know what happens between your brain and your hand, but it gets lost, and that is not what you told me what you were going to write.’

“That really upset me, and I wasn’t able to have the confidence to write again.”

Making creativity more accessible 

Fast forward to 2019, and Ms Jackson discovered Adelaide’s branch of Storytelling Australia.

The organisation aims to preserve the art of oral storytelling by encouraging members to tell stories by heart – no notes allowed. 

And not everyone has to tell, some people attend as listeners.  

In 2022, Ms Jackson and her husband moved to Wallaroo, a town on South Australia’s Copper Coast. The following year, she set up a local Storytelling branch with another woman who had also been in the Adelaide group.

“We’re one year old this month, which is very exciting,” she said.

“We’ve been telling a range of stories across that time, from personal histories, to historical stories, to comedy, whatever people feel like telling in the story form.”

The Wallaroo storytelling branch meets once a month, and attendees can share stories or simply listen. (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)

Ms Jackson said the group’s monthly meetings provide “cognitive and social stimulation” while also giving her a creative outlet, without the criticism of traditional writing groups. 

“My mother was diagnosed with dementia at the same age that I am now, and so therefore, I want to ensure that I can keep my memory going,” she said.

“For me to research a story, create the story, remember the story and then present it, it takes a lot of cognitive function.

“That’s one thing that I feel will enable me to stay more mentally intact.”

Ms Elliss has been a part of the group since day one.

“I enjoy making stories and I’ve got a bit of an imagination, and it gets carried away sometimes,” she said.

“I wouldn’t even think to join a writing group because I don’t write that often.

“When I tell a story, once I start, I’m in the story, I have no idea how it sounds to other people or what it’s like out there, because my story is here [within me],” she said. 

Storytelling magic

World famous children’s writer Mem Fox started the group with former children’s librarian of SA, Sue Robinson, in Adelaide in 1981.

These days, there are branches all around Australia, including Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane. 

Australian children’s writer Mem Fox co-founded Storytelling Australia in Adelaide in 1981.  (Supplied)

Ms Fox said storytelling is “spellbinding”, and “the most wonderful human communication”.

“I absolutely adore being in a school, being in a library … with little children, reading my own stories to them,” she said.

“But when you’re reading a book, you’re looking at the book and then looking at the audience … you keep cutting the audience off.

“Whereas if you’re storytelling, you never lose sight of the audience.

“You have them in the palm of your hand — they are hardly breathing.”

Ms Fox said the groups are great for people who can’t, or don’t want to, write, and that the act of writing or typing should not be confused with this kind of storytelling.

“It’s learning other people’s stories by heart, brilliant stories that have been around forever,” she said.

“You listen to the story over and over and over again, you rehearse it … it’s a feat of memory.

“It’s communication, it’s community.”

When learning by heart suits the brain 

Australian Dyslexia Association president Jodi Clements said storytelling groups can benefit people with dyslexia, as they use an “innate” form of communication.

“Considering written communication … is what they struggle with, it’s like a breath of fresh air,” Ms Clements said.

“If we go back in history to the development of the English language being presented in its written form, it’s only about 5,000 years old.

“Some of the most famous storytellers in history, including Agatha Christie, have dyslexia.

“So definitely bypassing that challenge they have with written language, they may in fact discover an aspect of language that they have strength in,” she said.

“That’s really important for people with dyslexia when you consider the schooling system all the way through to high school revolving so much around less and less oral output and more and more reading and writing.”

Flinders University Professor of Allied Health and Active Ageing Kate Laver said oral storytelling gatherings can also help reduce the 14 risk factors of dementia, even for those without a history of dementia in their family.

“There’s good evidence that maintaining social connections is really important in terms of dementia prevention,” she said.

Flinders University Professor of Allied Health and Active Ageing Kate Laver. (Flinders University)

“Up to 40 per cent of cases of dementia aren’t linked to family history at all — they are linked to other risk factors, and one of the risk factors is not having enough cognitive stimulation.

“There are multiple cognitive skills [involved with storytelling], there’s the reading, the understanding, the retaining of information, and then the repeating of information.

“The more that we can build our cognitive reserve the better we are.

“For some people, that’s crosswords or sudoku, for some people it might be storytelling group, for other people it’s different activities.”