International Storytelling Center director reflects on 50 years of the National Storytelling Festival

JONESBOROUGH — The National Storytelling Festival has come a long way since its humble beginning a half-century ago.Held atop an old farm wagon in Courthouse Square in downtown Jonesborough, the inaugural festival played to an audience of dozens. Since its founding in 1973 by Jonesborough teacher Jimmy Neil Smith, who later served several terms as mayor, the festival has grown into one of the largest in Northeast Tennessee and one of the world's marquee storytelling events.The International Storytelling Center, which was born as a result of the festival and produces it, now has partnerships with dozens of the nation's premier institutions, including the Smithsonian, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for Humanities, Rotary International and the United Nations, among many others."Jimmy Neil was so visionary in establishing so many of these partnerships," ISC President Kiran Singh Sirah said. "I mean, he truly was a visionary right at the beginning. He calls himself a country boy with a big dream, but he followed through, you know. He's a guy that knew if you wanted the National (Storytelling Festival), it was an idea you had to work towards creating."Singh Sirah said the single greatest thing his predecessor did was record previous festivals. He said the ISC is home to the largest collection of American folk tales outside the Library of Congress."No one, I think, has really fully appreciated that forward thinking visionary that Jimmy Neil laid the foundation for," Singh Sirah said.Smith retired as president of the ISC in 2012 and was succeeded by Singh Sirah in 2013."I was asked in the beginning, 'How do you plan (to change the festival)?'," Singh Sirah said. "I said I don't plan to change anything that's working. What I plan to do is layer in new opportunities. It was less a sort of shift than it was layering in and opening up and making things more accessible."Singh Sirah said one of the things he's most proud of is introducing a livestream option in 2014, something that helped lay the groundwork for the ISC to hold a virtual festival when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.This year's festival will be the first held in-person since then. Singh Sirah said the pandemic, while challenging, presented an opportunity to "do something new" in the creation of a virtual festival, which has been done the last two years. Singh Sirah said organizers found there is a demand for a virtual festival, and a virtual component will be part of the National Storytelling Festival going forward."What the virtual festival does, is it tells the world we exist, and our town exists, and our region exists, so come visit," Singh Sirah said. "It gives people that opportunity (to learn about us), so we're going to build off that and we are going to do a curated virtual festival this year."Each year the storytelling festival brings more than 10,000 visitors to Jonesborough, the ISC estimates, generating millions in economic impact. But for Singh Sirah, it's not about the numbers."It's about making a difference and intentionally making a difference, enriching people's lives," Singh Sirah said.Singh Sirah said it isn't surprising that the festival has become what it is today, and added that the town is fortunate the festival started here first, where it might have had more of an impact than it would in a larger city where there are more distractions and things might become more commercialized."What happens in Jonesborough doesn't stay in Jonesborough," Singh Sirah said. "We come to Jonesborough, we get inspired, we learn, we change ... and we take that back into the world and we do good in the world."