Branching off from a unique event in Belfast, Tenx9 Nottingham sees nine local people tell ten minute stories about their lives in the atmospheric surrounds of Broadway Cinema. The next instalment of the event is in January, so we heard more about it from facilitator Sai Masud.
Tenx9 is a regular storytelling night, in which nine people tell ten-minute true stories about their own lives. How would you tell your story, Sai?
I’m a consultant clinical psychologist in adult mental healthcare in Nottinghamshire NHS, and a member of Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organisation – Corrymeela – where I learnt about the power of community as a way of sharing experiences and holding back differences that in other circumstances can lead to divisions and separations.
I was born on a mountain in Kashmir, and I moved to the UK when I was a child. My dad is a poet, so even though I never felt that I fully belonged to Kashmir or the UK, I knew I felt at home in ‘words.’ I have a love of words and people, and storytelling just brought the two together.
During lockdown, I was living in a hamlet between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. It was incredibly isolating, even if wonderful in terms of space and nature. When I returned to Nottingham, I made a vow to myself that I would do something to feel in and for the community of Nottingham.
Tenx9 began in Belfast – how did you get involved in bringing it to Nottingham?
I’m in Ireland quite a lot, because of my work with Corrymeela, and on one such visit in the summer of 2023 friends of mine booked tickets for us to attend this thing called the Tenx9. I had no idea what it was. That was my first time – I heard stories from a bricklayer, an ex-nun, someone who worked for the BBC, and so on. I laughed, cried, and felt in awe of each person who told their story. It was a fantastic, free, night.
I should add that the day after the Tenx9, I was doing a coastal walk and ran into one of the storytellers, Richard O’Leary (a very established storyteller from Bangor in Northern Ireland), on the beach – not so much ran into him, more running over to him screaming that I’d loved his story! He promised to speak to Paul about letting me have a go.
I think stories are a wonderful way of learning about our blind-spots, in an unintentional, non-threatening manner
I straight away knew that we in Nottingham could do this – we are the City of Literature, it’s in our bones and blood. I spoke to co-founder Paul Doran that night – I’m not sure what he made of me, but I was full of excitement, energy, and begging him to let me create one in Nottingham. Within a few months I set up a year’s worth of events for 2024.
How would you describe these nights to a newcomer?
Tenx9 gives the everyday person the opportunity to tell a story. It is not necessarily ‘the’ story of their life – the one framing all other experiences or the one illuminating profound meaning. It is not fiction. It is one perspective on one of their experiences, through the lens of the theme that has been set for that event.
It is a non-judgemental space. Everyone in the audience is rooting for the person telling their story. It is as much about the story-listeners as it is the storytellers. The space is created so that there is no division between the two – there’s no stage upon which the storytellers sit. They sit together.
I think it also offers a freedom to give your story away. Difficult experiences are brought into the open – when someone reading their story pauses, stops to catch their breath, swallows the lump in their throat or halts a tear in their eye – the audience feels the momentousness of what is happening before them. We are all ears, eyes and hearts.
It is a very liberating and freeing experience. It is a conquering of the story that they have survived to tell.
The oral tradition of storytelling seems to have shrunk in the modern world. What is it about telling stories that you believe is so important?
I think the world has become so divisive, we feel vulnerable about how we will be received for ourselves. Covid amplified this segregation and aloneness. We all became mini-islands – standalone and stranded from the mainland. Coming together on a shared theme tells us that we can sit in the same space with different meanings and different struggles but maintain our contact and connection. This is what community is: it is created between people and driven by what we put into it.
I think stories are a wonderful way of learning about our blind-spots, in an unintentional, non-threatening manner. We live in a time when you have access to anyone in the world, their life, their story, their truth, in the easiest, quickest way. Yet, prejudice, stereotyping, othering and polarisation continue to increase at a speed that we cannot keep up with, nor slow down.
When you sit in a room with strangers and you hear their story directly from them, it is quite impossible to refute them and their humanity. The Irish are natural storytellers, and I really admire that – even at Corrymeela, we do peace work through bringing together storytellers.
In a recent session I heard from young people from South Korea, telling us about how they overcame their prejudice of those in North Korea – through children on each side of the border drawing, writing and connecting with each other. Because you can’t refute what is embodied and tangibly in front of you. It brings a level of engagement that starts at a very human level. Person to person.
The next instalment of Tenx9 Nottingham, with the theme ‘awkward’, takes place at Broadway Cinema on 20 January. Submit pieces to tenx9nottm@gmail.com by 17 January.
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