What is Project Grimm?

Project Grimm was conceived during the 2011 conference of the Federation for European Storytelling in Toledo, Spain. Storytellers representing many European countries and many storytelling traditions agreed that the Grimm fairy tales are part of our common cultural heritage, and they should be celebrated as so - especially in 2012, when Kinder- und Hausmärchen is going to reach the 200th anniversary of its first publication (December 20, 1812).

To celebrate well-known and less well-known Grimm tales and all their distant cousins in other European storytelling traditions, participants of the Project Grimm created a game. There rules were as follows:

- Every participant (individual teller or group) will create a preformance, or a series of performances, from 4 Grimm tales

- 2 of the four tales will be chosen by the participant from the tales published in the KHM's first edition

- the other 2 tales will be assigned to the participants by draw (these are also called their "luck stories"

- participants will prepare their performances, record them on camera, and submit the videos to the project's coordinator by December 31, 2011.

This site is the result of Project Grimm; it is a place to share the videos born from the game. Our goal is to celebrate the Grimm tales and their significant influence on European culture and storytelling.

You can browse the videos by language, name and country of the teller, KHM number, and tale title. Some tales are published in whole, others are only excerpts from the performances.

We wish you all an exciting Grimm Year! Let the stories begin!