The storytales children's and youth book festival combines a multilingual interactive book exhibition with a diverse reading- and workshop offerings. With its free and low-threshold offer, we would like to contribute to the visibility of social diversity, for cultural participation, to promote reading skills and aesthetic education.
The festival was launched 2021 from Buchkinder Kassel e.V. and since then by the story team – a team of freelance artists and educators as well as volunteers – organized and carried out.
The first three editions took place in the Schlachthof cultural center and enjoyed an increasing number of visitors from year to year:inner number. In 2021 took 600 Visitors:take part in the festival inside – 2023 were there with 1.300 Visitors:inside there are already more than twice as many. Over the past three years, storytales has established itself as an integral part of Kassel's cultural landscape.
The heart of the festival, the interactive book exhibition, can be experienced every year through a rally. She stimulates, to actively engage with the books and become creative in the process. After the festival, the multilingual and carefully curated book selection will be added to the youth library’s holdings, so that the books remain permanently and easily accessible.
A special offer of the festival are the guided tours through the exhibition for daycare centers, after-school care centers and schools. In 2021 A few tours took place under pandemic restrictions, which have been greatly expanded over the years. So were in 2023 19 Tours for almost 500 offered to children and young people.
Workshops and readings with well-known authors and artists also took place. These include Sasa Stanisic, among others (German book prize winners 2019), Dita Zipfel (Children- and youth book prize 2020) and illustrators like Lucia Zamolo and Dian Gohring. Also local players like Rotopol Verlag, the publisher bliblalub and the blogger Marcel Kahl (Rainbow daddy) rounded off the festival program.
2024 found the festival, due to lack of financial resources, in the children- and youth library of the city of Kassel, a long-standing partner of the festival.