Malawi National Library documents folklore

Genre : Cultural projects
Principal country concerned : Column : Poetry / story telling
Release/publication date : 2015
Published on : 23/04/2015
Source : http://mwnation.com/malawi-national-library-documents-folklore/ 23 April 2015

Malawi's National Library Service (NLS) is running a children story-telling initiative which is part of a bigger project of preserving the country's folklore.
The service has in the past two years been documenting Malawian folklores with 280 so far collected.
In an interview with The Nation, NLS director Grey Nyali said they noted that Malawians are ignoring their traditional folklore.
"We felt obliged to preserve the folklores and so far, 280 in 23 districts have been collected with Kasungu, Dowa, Ntchisi, Nkhotakota and Likoma remaining," he said.
To disseminate the same to the public, the folklores which are now in audio and video formats, will be shared to children through storytelling.
"We are currently looking for storytellers whose job will be to share folklores with children who will be gathering at NLS headquarters in Lilongwe on Saturdays and Sundays.
"These will be open and free sessions for children in Lilongwe and surrounding areas. This is going to be a pilot phase and depending on the success of the initiative, we will extend to all our centres," explained Nyali.
The story-telling sessions will start as soon as auditions for the required 10 tellers are done.
Before the end of this year, all the folk tales are going to be published into a children's book.
"They will be categorised according to themes and then published. The idea is to encourage the reading culture amongst children.  Again, the recorded videos which will have English and Japanese subtitles, will be available for renting," he said.
Japan has been instrumental in supporting the project as it has much interest in cultural issues.  Unesco Malawi office is the main sponsor.

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