A storyteller’s journey

I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, where the old ways of knowing are still threaded through the land and the language. Storytelling was in the water long before I knew to name it.

It was studying Community Education in Glasgow that first made me conscious of what story could do — not just entertain, but hold a room together, mirror life trails and tribulations act a safe distance, carry the kind of wisdom that can be rare in the modern world.

I've been working professionally as a storyteller since 2015. Sold-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Commissions from the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, BBC Scotland, and the Scottish Government. Stories told across four continents — from village halls in the Borders to ancestral skills camps in the Pacific Northwest, to helping set a Guinness World Record in 2025 at the Marrakech Storytelling Festival.

The work I'm most proud of is less visible — tending the roots that keep it alive. Teaching these stories, learning them, passing them on.

Work With Me

Storytelling Reviews

  • Corr Blimey Review

    “Mackay’s storytelling is warm and evocative, rooted in the oral tradition but unafraid to experiment. He shifts between narrator, character, and commentator with ease, drawing the audience into tales that span continents and centuries.”

  • Lothian Life Magazine

    “Dougie is a captivating presence- he evokes a time when poetry and stories mattered as much as a warrior’s prowess, and codes of hospitality were strict and not to be broken.”

  • All Edinburgh Theatre

    “Dougie MacKay is a skilled and accomplished storyteller who quickly establishes a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere that encourages the audience to engage with the stories.”

Story Videos

Celtic Tales at Edinburgh Fringe

An East African tale at Wildhood Festival

Approach to Storytelling

I grew up where the codes of hospitality, the spirit of the ceilidh, and the habit of gathering around a fire are still alive.

I trained at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and was fortunate to learn from several Scottish storytelling elders.

This tradition values connection over theatre — storytelling as a hearthside art and a common birthright.

Highland Folk Ways

Years of outdoor learning, foraging, and wild wandering have made the living world a constant presence in my practice.

Some of my most distinctive work — wolf tracking experiences, salmon lore weekends, land-based immersions — grew directly from the belief that story and landscape cannot be separated.

It's what draws me back to the ancestral skills and nature connection world, in Scotland and far beyond it.

Nature Culture

Some old stories do more than entertain.

They are patterns for living well, carriers of cultural wisdom, stirrers of the psyche.

The work of Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Martin Shaw, and Michael Meade sits in this territory and has profoundly shaped my practice — particularly in the Myth as Medicine course and the Story Mentoring programme.

Mythopoetics

“Eye to Eye, Mind to Mind, Heart to Heart”

There is a Scottish Traveller saying that rings true, “Stories are best told eye to eye, mind to mind, heart to heart.”

Connection is at the heart of storytelling. The aliveness of the moment is key. In theatre there is a ‘fourth wall’ between audience and performer. In storytelling, the ability to respond to and include the audience within the tale sets it apart from more exclusive art forms.

In theatre there is a fourth wall. In storytelling there isn't.

Ancestral Craft

Storytelling is not a performance skill — it is an ancestral craft, as old as human gathering. Language itself evolved through story, told by firelight as our ancestors made sense of the world and each other.

Folk tales and myths attune us to people of times past — their worldview and values, daily rhythms and beliefs. History is written by outsiders. The people's history was carried in the stories they told.

Storytelling Resources