What is Campfire Stories?

A friendly, fun, once-monthly Friday evening event for East Bay kids, ages 4-10 and their grownups. It features live music, a story by the fire, and then socializing and s’mores.

Our intended gifts to our audience are:

• Relationships with stories and characters who can be lifelong touchstones 

• Friendships between kids and families

• Friendship with the outdoors

Event staff lead kids in a pre-story world-building activity (a craft, a nature walk, a sensory experience) to sensitize kids to imagery in the story. 

Campfire Stories is currently held at Mariposa Garden, which is an intimate private space in South Berkeley. Possible future location is Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland. 

Storytellers Wanted! 

We’re looking for stories that are approximately 20 minutes long, and we value stories which:

• Encourage full-body audience participation

• Are memorized / “in the jawbone” as opposed to read from a book 

• Draw from the realms of fairytales, folktales, and ancestral stories

• Have resonance with part of a natural cycle (more on that below)

Producers will create a pre-story activity (with your collaboration, if you like) to enrich kids’ readiness to enter the world of the story. 

Our events feature live music, and you will have the opportunity to request some collaboration from the evening’s musician. We hold one pre-show artistic talk-through which gives the musician and storyteller a chance to say hello and make a plan for collaboration if the spirit moves them.

We offer a Storyteller stipend of $100 per event.

Interested?

Say hello via the form below and if we’re a fit we’ll be in touch!