Difference between revisions of "Storytelling"

Potential applications of storytelling are:

• Breaking down barriers between multidisciplinary or multi-cultural teams;
• Team or community-building exercises;
• Workshop warm-ups;
• Trips debriefings and review;
• Project reviews;
• Monitoring systems
• Entertainment and fun ^[1]

General Guidelines

Choice of the story

• Type of story:
  • Folktale, meaning a story from oral tradition
  • Literary Tale, by a single author, made for publishing
  • Real Life Story, form history and personal experiences

• Characteristics of the story
  • It should be simple, with a single, clearly defined theme, and powerful
  • It should be in response to a demand, and timed with specific opportunities.
  • It should have a nice style, with vivid word picture, pleasing sounds and rhythm,
  • It should provide a solution to both immediate and broader problems;
  • It should be targeted at people with the power to make decisions and change things;
  • It should play to what is already in people’s mind.

Preparation

• Read the story several times
• Analyze the words, thinking about the pictures you want the listener to see and the mood you want to create.
• Research background and cultural meaning of the story
• Learn the story as a whole and not in fragments, whithouth memorizing it.
• Map out the story line:
  • Beginning: When the caracters are introduced,
  • Body, in which the plot gets to the climax
  • Resolution, where the conflicts are solved

• Characteristics of the narration:
  • Emphasis
  • Repetition
  • Transition
  • Pause
  • Proportion

• Tricks to keep the attention:
  • Involvement or participation of listeners
  • Distinct changes in pace, voice or mood
  • Unusual or unexpected twist in narrations

Techniques

There are different techniques to conduct a storytelling session, here are illustrated two among them, that uses the storytelling tool in different ways:

Technique 1

• Introduce the workshop and the theme for storytelling. It's important to provide the participants a context on which they can reflect and that permits them to select the story they are going to tell.
• Make participants reflect on a story and think about details of before, during and after.
• Ask participants to form pair and to share the story they have prepared.
• Ask the participant that is listening in each moment to interview the partner and fill the Story Template as a guide, so that as much details as possible will be collected.
• Form bigger groups of two pairs, where each participant will tell the story that was previously told by the partner.
• Make participants reflect on common points and contradditions of each one of the stories.
• Ask every small group to present to the whole group their findings and conclusions.

Technique 2

• Divide the participants in group of 6.
• Ask the participant to think of a concrete and specific story, realted to the objectivo of the workshop or porject.
• Each participant has 90 seconds to tell his own story.
• When everyone has finished ask the participants to recall the story that they consider more powerful and to rember who told that story.
• Ask the participant to change groups.
• Ask them to tell their story again in 20 seconds, observing how it changes and improves in telling it again.
• Repeat the task of thinking wich story they liked the most and who told it.
• If there are many participants it's possible to create new groups and go on with the exercise.
• Ask everyone to remember the person who told the most powerful story, go to that person and put the hand on his/her shoulder. A network of people will form, reaviling a few of high-impact stories.
• Ask the people who told those stories to tell them again in fornt of the whole group.^[2]

Job Aid

Storytelling Template