Becoming a Storyteller - in the beginning
My name is Jan Blake and I've been a professional storyteller for 20 years, specialising in traditional stories from West Africa and the Caribbean and working with children, teachers and professionals in the corporate sector in various venues, including theatres, arts centres, schools, colleges and festivals. 
In the beginning...
I was born and brought up in Manchester England. My parents are Jamaican working people therefore a lot of emphasis was placed on the value of education, and what a privilege it was for my brothers, sister and myself to have free education. Having said that, my education at home was very much rooted in Jamaican folk culture, whilst my education outside of the home was very much Mancunian English. 'The ship sails through the alley, alley oh', and all that.
I didn't become aware of the fact that I was black until I started primary school. I went to Birchfields Primary School and on my first day, a boy called me a dirty piece of black coal. I didn't understand why he'd said it, but I do remember that it hurt and I never forgot the experience.
The first time I became aware of the difference between home and school was when we had our first letter writing class. At home, my parents spoke in the vernacular, Jamaican Creole or patois, as it is commonly known. My mum used to dictate letters for me to write home to my Grandmother. They always started 'Dear Mama. How keeping? Hope Fine. ...' and ended 'Your same Myrtle' As far as I was concerned, this was a perfect example of how a letter should be written as I proudly declared in class in front of all the other seven-year-olds.
My teacher was appalled. ''That, Janet Blake, is not English!' NOT ENGLISH? What language did I speak then, and how come my Gran' could understand my letters?
These were the kind of questions I wrestled with up to my teens. Why was I black? Where was Jamaica anyway? Why did my grandparents never come to visit? And why, when my mum spoke of home, could I never quite connect with the memory of this imagined place? This place where the sun shone all day long and the children knew quite naturally who they were and how to be, this place where parents didn't have to constantly remind their children that, essentially, they were somehow different from themselves... not quite Jamaican enough.
Growing Pains
Adolescence was the usual nightmare, so concerns about being black took a back seat for a few years. In it's place came Bay City Rollers, hormones and a complete dearth of boyfriends, but when I hit my 20s, now living in London, I started to read about the roots of racism; slavery, colonialism and imperialism. I began to feel even more uncomfortable about myself and about being here in England, Black, rootless, cultureless (or so it seemed) angry and afraid. I tried everything from pan-Africanist Scientific Socialism to Rastafarianism. It was all very Afro-centric and right on, but none of it seemed to allow for the girl who liked to play 'The big ship sailed through the alley, alley oh'. There was no space for who I really was or where I'd arrived. The dilemma was, should I give up searching for this so called identity, or should I assume an identity so long as it was Afro-centric in expression, regardless of who I was or how I really felt about it.
I became an actress in 1983 working in 'Agit Prop' and political theatre. By June 1986 I had become disillusioned with community theatre and what it had to offer to a young black actress. I was looking for an alternative form of creative expression, one that took into account my cultural heritage, without me having to constantly refer to myself as a victim of colonialism and imperialism.
It was whilst I was asking these questions that I re-discovered an art form that has been carried by the women of my family for generations - Storytelling. I reconnected with a gift that had been mine (if I did but know it) and began to seek out stories that I felt needed to be told in our contemporary age. Since then I have been working away at performing and teaching story, always trying to find new ways to breathe new life into a form that has been, at best forgotten at worst, ridiculed. I was encouraged to join Common Lore Storytellers and Musicians - a Brixton-based group of international storytellers. It was like opening an Ali Baba's cave of riches; songs games riddles and stories galore.
Click here for Becoming a Storyteller - Telling Tales
© Jan Blake