“I never wanted it to be this million-dollar story.”
In Fitzgerald Power’s interview series, we’re speaking to people with different perspectives who feel they can offer more to the workplace, from the water cooler all the way up to the C-Suite. Today, it’s Ciarán Gaffney, founder and CEO of storytelling night, Seanchoíche.
Much has been written, said and shared about Ireland’s unique storytelling talents. People say it’s responsible for a myriad: our intrepid entrepreneurs, our beguiling actors and the unmissable Green Wave that dominated mass media through film, literature and song in recent years. Though storytelling has been central to all aspects of the Irish identity internationally, perhaps none of it has been applied so potently as in Seanchoíche, the Irish storytelling night that’s gone global by way of CEO, Ciarán Gaffney. Founded in 2021, Seanchoíche – a portmanteau of Irish words “seanchaí” (storyteller) and “oíche” (night) and pronounced “shanna-key-ha” – began as a friend-only event in Dublin 8, inspired by the desire for connection during a time of isolation. “I was living in Argentina in 2017, and while there, I attended a spoken word night held by a friend,” Gaffney says. “I first just went as a regular punter, then began to volunteer, coordinating speakers, MCing, that sort of thing.” Gaffney then moved to the US and largely forgot about it, but soon came to realise how few spaces existed in Ireland to meet new people and create connections this way. Particularly post-COVID, when connection felt like the rarest gem.
He quickly mobilised to hold the first event, in the Fumbally Stables, for an audience of 60. Five speakers were pre-booked, and three audience members chose to speak on the night – an opportunity Gaffney offers to the audience at each event. It set the tone for the future and a path for Gaffney he hadn’t anticipated. “At the time, Seanchóiche was just a hobby,” he says from West Cork, where his latest event is being held. “There were two turning points which changed that. The first was, I made a mistake in my actual job. Like I made a mistake that maybe cost us a couple of days on a deadline, and I couldn’t sleep for two days. I was so anxious. It consumed everything about me. I conflated all of my self-worth with this one mistake I made at work, and I completely just lost faith in myself. And then, like, a week later, I made a far bigger mistake for Seanchoíche, where I basically sent an email to all of our mailing lists with the wrong ticket release times for the entire Christmas tour in Dublin. This mistake went down to 4000 people, and we got stinker emails back from people calling me all sorts, and I actually just laughed and thought, okay, that was bad, but I’ll know better for next time. Then I kind of sat down and was like, hold on a second. One mistake I see as detrimental, whereas this one I see as a learning experience. And I think that was a sign to say that I actually love this, and I absolutely hated what I was actually doing. That was kind of what made me say, right, I need to quit my job and do this.
“The second turning point was when I still wasn’t confident enough to quit my job, so I started interviewing for other ones. And so I got to the final round of this tech sales job, and the guy interviewing with me emailed me to say that I didn’t get the job, but he asked if I could still take a phone call. So he called me to say I didn’t get the job because it was so clear I shouldn’t be working in anything apart from Seanchoíche. He was like, the way you spoke about this storytelling concept, it’s just so worlds apart from the way you spoke about anything else. He actually said he wouldn’t be able to sit with himself if he gave me the job. So that was the final turning point for me.”
Today, Seanchoíche hosts sold-out events around the world – Gaffney is just back from Accra, Ghana, and Seanchoíche runs in Vancouver, New South Wales and Dublin in November – to produce the same kind of event and atmosphere he did on that first night, five years ago. Audiences and speakers range from all walks of life, and all commit to the same thing: listening, openness and creating a space for vulnerability to thrive. It is a testament to this energy that most speakers will begin a story with “I’ve never done anything like this before”. Mercifully, for Gaffney as well as his team’s sake, it’s a concept that has translated elegantly across multiple countries and industries. “Going out on my own pushed me to start organising events in multiple cities, countries and employee workshops within organisations, to generate even the bones of an income. Today, we do a lot of work in companies that want to offer their employees ways to improve their public speaking or storytelling skills. We’ve run events in Google, ad agencies, law firms, and that’s been really great because it’s allowed me to expand what Seanchoíche is while also paying my team.”
The challenges of running a creative business are well-documented, but few took Gaffney by surprise. “So many people abroad have asked if the name is a misspelling of Seán’s Choice,” he laughs. “But that is just going to happen when you’re working with an Irish name. And that said, there are plenty of people who know now what it means – and to think there are people in Australia who have a bit of Irish is quite special.” As with most new concepts, however, Gaffney often finds that Seanchoíche participants and speakers tend to fight the mind last. “When we come to a new city, people will see an international organisation and expect the speakers to be at a really professional level or that it’s a night where you need to be a writer to speak,” he says. “And the whole point of Seanchoíche is that it’s ordinary people telling their extraordinary stories. So I think, given a new country, oftentimes people will be a little bit nervous to apply to speak, because they won’t see themselves as the right fit. But then, when they understand what Seanchoíche is all about, they regularly find themselves drawn to the concept.”
Gaffney’s first targets for countries and cities to bring Seanchóiche to were Irish diaspora hubs – London, Sydney, New York, Vancouver, etc – cities where Irish residents could explain the draw of storytelling to friends and partners. “When we visit a place a second time, it’s actually usually mostly non-Irish in the audience.” Today, he and his team have scaled successfully to countries that rarely boast an Irish diaspora, something he credits to the power of social media advertising. “Putting spend behind our posts is another way of reaching a whole new wave of audience members and speakers as well, because you then can actually reach an audience that never would have actually discovered us before. It’s allowed us to diversify our audience entirely.”
To date, the secret of Seanchoíche’s success has never been money. And if Gaffney has his way, it never will be. “I never wanted it to be this million-dollar story,” he smiles. “What I love about generating income with Seanchoíche is that I can just put it straight back into the business to get to do more creative things.” Marrying creativity with an idea that is economically viable is a well-worn balancing act for CEOs, but acting as Gaffney’s North Star is exactly what the business is about: people. “We do a huge amount of fundraising events throughout the year,” he says. “We’ve raised around €10,000 for medical aid for Palestine this year alone. And we’re hoping to work with the Irish Refugee Council in January. And then we’ve done lots of charity initiatives, we’ve worked with prisons, and we’ve also given away tickets to people who don’t have access to them. I think toeing the line between being an event that is for-profit, which Seanchoíche for all intents and purposes is, but also giving back to the people who have kind of allowed it to grow, is really important to me. It’s been a huge learning opportunity for us to meet people who maybe are a little bit more voiceless than others, and give them the toolkit to go back out into the world. We’ve also been pretty strict on who we partner with. Because, you know, we have all these big brands and companies who have loads of money to throw at organisations like us, but it needs to feel right, to feel ethical as well. And you know, that’s something that we are constantly monitoring and being really conscious of.”
Is AI storytelling an issue yet? “God, I hope not,” Gaffney laughs. “We’ve had one guy take the piss out of a story ChatGPT wrote for him, but apart from that, no. Maybe I’m being naive here, but I think most people who attend would have a level of hesitation to write a ChatGPT story and then read it out in front of the audience. However, in the back of my mind, I have wondered: Jesus, could that happen? But I think Seanchoíche is the antidote to that – or at least we hope so, anyway.”
The scenes in Seanchoíche that Gaffney responds to most strongly are regularly from people from different places, with no previous idea of the concept, who stand to speak, despite not even being able to pronounce the event’s title. It is this desire, this bald push at empathy, that keeps him pushing for Seanchoíche to be available to anyone who wants to attend around the planet. “I’d like to be on every continent,” he smiles. “Flying the Irish flag, and the storyteller flag in every single continent. Antarctica might be a stretch, but the other six I would love. On a personal level, I’d love not to be travelling so much. To get to a place where there are people in all parts of the world who are managing it, and getting it to a place where I can be a little bit distant. That comes with time and the right funding, which we’re always hesitant to ask for, but I think that that’s something we need to start doing more of – to embed ourselves a little bit more in other parts of the world.” He is also, crucially, hesitant to compromise. “We need to keep it as intimate a space as we always have. I never, ever, ever want Seanchoíche to feel like something that the speakers have to rehearse for, or perform at; it’s a space to be yourself or tell your own personal story. When it’s a performance, it becomes a very different thing. We want everyone there to be able to look into the eyes of each other – because that’s when the magic happens. Each and every time.”
Bolands Mills is hosting its first-ever Seanchoíche on the 1st November, as part of this year’s Bram Stoker Festival. The event is sold out, but speaker slots (and plus ones) are still available – Apply here: seanchoiche.com/tellyourstory
