FEAST Foundation Course - Faculty Bios
𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗹𝗮 𝗪𝗲𝗲 is a Singaporean storyteller, who has been living and breathing storytelling since 1998. She co-founded Singapore’s first professional storytelling company with Kiran Shah, and because of her work to pioneer the revival of storytelling in Singapore, she has become known as Singapore’s Godmother of Storytelling. She is a founding member of the Storytelling Association (Singapore) and has served multiple terms as its president. Through her role as a Founding Director of the Federation of Asian Storytellers (FEAST) she is now helping to support storytellers throughout Asia and beyond.
Sheila’s storytelling experience is deep and wide-ranging and she works both in Singapore and internationally. An award-winning storytelling trainer, Sheila’s highly practical and inspirational workshops have garnered consistently high ratings from participants. She runs regular courses in storytelling for preschool teachers. She has curated and performed exhibit specific performances for museums, trained tourist guides and docents for museums and art galleries to use storytelling in their tours, trained primary to secondary level teachers and university lecturers to use storytelling in their teaching, and corporate, military and civil service leaders in the use of storytelling as an organisational tool.
Her clients for storytelling workshops in Singapore include; the Early Childhood Development Agency, the National University of Singapore Business School, Yale-NUS College, the Ministry of Defence, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Education, the World Wildlife Fund, the Jane Goodall Foundation, Singapore Tourism Board and the National Heritage Board.
Kiran Shah, a Singaporean of Indian heritage, started her career as a social worker before becoming an early childhood educator living and working in the U.S., Japan and Sri Lanka. With a master’s in early childhood education and development (1992) she has trained thousands of early childhood educators in language and literacy.
She discovered storytelling in 1998 and started the revival of oral storytelling in Singapore by setting up the country's first storytelling company (with Sheila Wee). They focused on promoting Asian folktales and together worked towards professional development for storytellers, organising and conducting courses and conferences.
Her storytelling journey has taken her from schools, museums and libraries to the military, offering storytelling courses in diverse settings in Singapore and overseas.
Kiran believes in the power of story to educate, entertain and help the audience make relevant connections. Kiran’s great strength is in nurturing and connecting storytellers to one another. Since moving to Australia in 2008, she has been active in the Australian Storytelling Guild (NSW) serving first as its secretary and then as Vice- President until July 2024.
Kiran is an active supporter of FEAST and edited its first two anthologies (A Feast of Stories: Food Tales from Asia and Royals: Wise and Otherwise). She has been a mentor for FEAST‘s Adult Storytelling Mentorship Programme in all three seasons. She conducted a workshop at FEAST's Conference in South Korea in September 2024 and performed a Korean folktale bilingually with a Korean storytelling tandem partner.