Sure, it might seem a little obvious, but sometimes, only the obvious will do. The simplicity of storytelling often gets ignored but it’s this that makes it so potent.

Simplicity captures an audience’s attention. Simplicity has impact.

If you were in a cave and you were charged with keeping your tribe of hunter-gatherers entertained, you’d need to get them on board pretty quick. However, it’s in this simplicity that storytelling reveals its cleverness and importance as a communal activity.

In oral storytelling traditions, narratives can do two apparently opposite things at once: they can transport their audiences, taking them to different places; but they also serve to ground them in the here and now through a sense of shared experience.

Storytelling makes the unfamiliar familiar; it reassures and reaffirms; but it can also surprise, shock and delight. It transcends cultures and transmits crucial messages.

No wonder, then, that storytelling should be fundamental to placemaking. It evokes a sense of what it’s like to experience a place, whether visiting it, exploring it or belonging in, or to, it. It’s also where individual and shared perspectives meet and merge.

So, here we are with Patn Fest 2026, celebrating the central role of storytelling in placemaking. It’s a simple enough theme, but we think it’ll reveal multiple layers of interest and inspiration.

Join us in Manchester next month, on 17 June, at Fairfield Social Club.