Claire McNicol works as a traditional storyteller with a parallel career in social work with children and their families. She is originally from Co Antrim in Northern Ireland ‘where the Lagan softly flows”, but her home is now  Edinburgh in Scotland overlooking the castle. She lives with her husband also a storyteller and their daughter. Claire was fortunate to become part of an unbroken line of oral tradition in Scotland in the 1990’s learning from well known storytellers such as Duncan Williamson, Stanley Robertson and more recently Margaret Bennett.

Claire has performed in many festivals and worked in Iceland, Sweden and Austria.  She is at home with very young children and with adult audiences. Her gift is strongly in the field of facilitating participation and she has much experience in recent years as part of Makin a Brew in facilitating song and music making with under fives and their parents. This work has lead to parents writing their own poetry, a collection of which is in publication.