We had a great knowledge cafe last Thursday about storytelling. The magnificent personal impact coach and storyteller Tim Sheppard gave us a swift yet thorough overview, starting and finishing with a powerful tale about ‘Truth’ and ‘Story’ with plenty to think about in between.
Storytelling and narrative analysis bounced back into fashion through knowledge management a few years ago and is increasingly popular. We hear more and more about organisations looking to ‘engage us’ with ‘it’ (usually involving social media), but ‘it’ also has great power (with related ethical considerations) as a tool for groups to understand themselves, make sense of their situation and develop apropriately.
There are hints of this in social reporting, technical stewardship, user-centred design processes, community hosting and more.
One of the things that stuck most in my head from the k-cafe was the importance of stories to communities as social objects to share, compare, think about, discuss, and build around. We all have a different perspective on these tales, especially until they are written down, yet (and perhaps because of this) they bond us in many ways.
Here’s a bit from ‘The Storyteller’ by Mario Vargas Llosa:
“… I was deeply moved by the thought of that being, those beings, in the unhealthy forests of eastern Cusco and Madre de Dios, making long journeys of days or weeks, bringing stories from one group of Machiguengas to another and taking away others, reminding each member of the tribe that the others were alive, that despite the great distances that separated them, they still formed a community, shared a tradition and beliefs, ancestors, misfortunes and joys; the fleeting, perhaps legendary figures of those habladores who – by occupation, out of necessity, to satisfy a human whim – using the simplest, most time-hallowed of expedients, the telling of stories, were the living sap that circulated and made the Machiguengas into a society, a people interconnected and interdependent beings…”
(The Storyteller, p93)
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