UNA "Front Porch" Storytelling Festival

UNA "Front Porch" Storytelling Festival

Festival; Arts; Culture; University of North Alabama; Florence, AL

One of the world’s oldest spoken art form is storytelling and the Communication Department at the University of North Alabama acknowledges this. Beginning in 2011, UNA communications professor Dr. Bill Huddleston started to offer the course COM 480/580, which focuses on storytelling. Also beginning in 2011, the University of North Alabama and the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, co-sponsored an annual event known as Front Porch Storytelling Festival. The festival takes place in May on the University of North Alabama’s campus and various places in the city of Florence, such as Wilson Park and McFarland Park. During the festival, national, state, and local orators and musicians provide entertainment. In 2015, the first “Story Slam” took place. The Story Slam is an open competition to high school and middle school students, who share a five minute personal stories from their lives based on a themed subject. The winner of the Story Slam competition receives a five hundred dollar award.

Jesse Brock, University of North Alabama

Text:
“A Class Act,” in folder “University Events: Front Porch Storytelling Festival,” University Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.

Terry Pace, “Front Porch Storytelling Festival,” The Quad-Cities Daily, May 13, 2013.

University of North Alabama, “Story Slam,” UNA Front Porch Storytelling Festival, www.una.edu/storytelling.student-competition-html (accessed May 1, 2015).

Images:
folder “University Events: Front Porch Storytelling Festival,” University Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Collier Library, University of North Alabama, Florence, Alabama.

Alabama Cultural Resource Survey

2011-present
21st century
2000s

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