In these straitened times we hear a great deal about ways to entertain ourselves without pushing the boat out. Why see a West End show when you can rent a DVD? Why go out to dinner when you can cook spaghetti at home? Fair enough - but if you still want to go out and have an extravagant imaginative experience without a huge outlay of cash, you could do worse than to find yourself a storyteller to listen to.

There's a wealth of storytelling delights on offer this autumn. It's an art form which - in our supposedly sophisticated Western culture - too many people still think belongs, as the storyteller Shonaleigh Cumbers puts it, only “with the facepainter and the balloon-maker” but this is no more true than believing that theatre is only children's theatre or literature is only children's books. Listening to a great storyteller is a magical, remarkable experience: how can one man or one woman, all by him or herself, conjure a whole world from breath alone? I don't know the answer; I do know that it can be done.

Most storytellers will tell you that their imaginations are visual; when they tell a story, they are describing the pictures that they see. You will see those images too, of the walls of Troy, a modern Paris banlieu or an icy northern landscape ruled by trolls. These are special effects far more spectacular than anything accomplished by CGI: when the story ends, the image stays with you for ever.

This year the Arts Foundation has given storytelling a boost by offering one of its £10,000 fellowships to a storyteller; the fellowship programme, launched in 1993, is “designed to support individual artists who had shown commitment to, and reached some professional standing in, their art form”. The fellowships have recognised a wide range of forms: from graphic design to ceramics to literary translation. Now it's storytelling's turn, and if you'd like to hear the four shortlisted artists, all you have to do is turn up for the first night of the Barbican's 17th Performance Storytelling Series next Monday. Cumbers is one of the “contenders”, and while she's been telling stories professionally for the past ten years, it's in her blood: there have been storytellers in her family for many generations. “You can burn books but you can't burn hope,” Cumbers says, quoting her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. “Hope is held on the tongue of the people.”

Also shortlisted are Katy Cawkwell, whose compelling work has ranged from tales drawn from Camelot to indigenous Venezuelan myth; Catherine Aran, who tells in English and Welsh; and Peter Chand, born in the Punjab, who tells in his home and adopted continents. In India there is still a closer link to a time when storytelling was entertainment, education and socialisation rolled into one - though the rapid change in society there is altering that. Still, Chand says, telling stories in India is often more like a conversation: “Storytelling was never meant to be on a huge stage with a big gap between the storyteller and the front row,” he says. “In the Punjab it's much more of a community thing, a way of sharing culture.”

All four will tell a tale on the night, and a group of judges - the storyteller and artistic director Vayu Naidu, the Barbican's head of education Jillian Barker and the storyteller and producer Kat Quatermass - will decide the winner. But if you can't make it to the contest, don't despair: there are storytellers performing all week at the Barbican - and Ian McMillan, too.

Financial circumstances aside, autumn is the perfect season for stories. The days are darkening, the nights growing longer; time to sit by a metaphorical fire and open your heart to wonder. With just this idea in mind, you'll be able to hear a special sequence of stories, Tales for Winter, at Shakespeare's Globe, a series I can't pretend to be impartial about since I've been fortunate enough to spend some time working with Abbi Patrix, the remarkable French/Norwegian storyteller who'll be performing on November 29. But on four Saturdays running there will be transporting tales told at the Globe.

In Edinburgh, the Scottish International Storytelling Festival for 2008 is billed as Northlands and Sagalands. Inuit stories, Viking stories, Scottish stories - and workshops and lectures - will leave participants wishing to bundle themselves in warming furs.

If you've never heard a story since you were a kid, you'll be in for a real pleasure (and you will find events for children, incidentally, at the Unicorn Theatre in London over half term). If you're already an aficionado of the grown-up delights to be had in a tale well told, this autumn you're in for a special treat.

LEND THEM YOUR EARS

Performance storytelling at the Barbican, starting with the Arts Foundation shortlist, The Contenders, Oct 27-31 (www. barbican.org.uk/education)

The Storytelling Season at the Unicorn Theatre, events for kids 7-+children of 7 and over and familes, Oct 21-Nov 9 (www.unicorntheatre.com)

Tales for Winter at Shakespeare's Globe, for adults, starting on Nov 15, over four Saturday evenings (www.shakespeares- globe.org/globeeducation/publicevents/talesforwinter)

Tell-a-Story Day in Scotland, Oct 31, and in Edinburgh, Scottish International Storytelling Festival 2008: Northlands and Sagalands, from Friday to Nov 2 (www.scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk)

To see nationwide lists of storytelling events: the Crick Crack Club (www.crickcrackclub.com) and the Society for Storytelling (www.sfs.org)

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