Storyteller in Residence  with Kerry Writers Museum

Maria spent 22 years in a Global Multinational environment, spending her last 4.5 years as a European Operations Manager.  Maria became a Biodynamic Therapist (graduated from the Centre for Biodynamic and Integrative Psychotherapy, Galway 2007), and graduated from the MA programme in Dramatherapy Maynooth in 2010.

 

Maria works through the medium of Drama and Story Telling and has designed and delivered workshops on Building Resilience, Exploring Difficult Community Issues and Team Building in several environments including Corporate, Healthcare, Post Prison Services, Corporate, Toastmasters and Community.  Through this experience she has developed creative tools that allow clients to view their issues from different paradigms where they often discover they themselves have the answers that are needed. She has had excellent results in the Corporate Environment with issues like Crisis Management, Cultural Integration, Take Over and Merging Projects, Staff Retention etc.

 

Maria has been exploring the Medicinal Story through her work as a Dramatherapist and Story Teller with Cork Yarnspinners.  She has collected many delightful tales and wisdoms from Cork based Community work.  Maria delivered workshops on the ‘medicinal story’ in Olomouc University in the Chez Republic and been a guest lecturer in UCC and NUIM. She co-developed a ‘Resilience Through the Creative Arts’ 12 week program using the exploration of story as a mechanism to contact and grow self-resilience. She is very interested in what the enduring myths and legends have to offer the modern world in terms of wisdom.

 

In 2018 and 2019 Maria featured as an emerging storyteller in the annual Cape Clear Storytelling festival.  In 2018 and 2019 she won the The Mick McCarthy All Ireland Storytelling competition in Finugue with her own original tales harvested from her work with the six part story and collecting local wisdoms through story. She was a featured teller at the annual Listowel Writers Week in 2017.   In 2017 she won the Butter Road Storytelling competition in Blarney with an original story about the Butter Roads.

 

Maria Gillen 086-812 4938 beansceal@gmail.com 17^th April 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

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