More and more of my work revolves around storytelling. I lead Swansea Digital Storytelling (see swanseastorytelling.com ) and at least one day a week I train staff to make stories for the health service – this encompasses stories about things that have gone wrong as well as things that show best practice and stories of people’s personal journeys. I plan to share a number of ideas of how I encourage storytelling in Creative Quarter blogs over the next few months.
Encouraging Storytelling Idea no. 3
Stories of your name – this one hardly ever fails – people have stories of who they were named after, how their parents chose, what it means, how their name has changed, nick names, misspellings, middle names and more... I might tell one to start off the sharing: my full name is Prudence Thimbleby, which I only use if I am travelling with my passport. Unfortunately many airlines just use the first five letters of your first name so all my baggage is labelled ‘Prude Thimbleby’!
Encouraging Storytelling Idea no. 4
This is an idea I borrowed from other digital storytellers – it involves fire – so should not be done where you can set off fire alarms. In a circle take it in turns to light a long match and for as long as the match burns you have the floor to talk about anything that you feel passionately about – positive or negative passion – just get it out! But if the match goes out you have to stop – this activity always creates fun and energy. A fireproof alternative is to balance on one leg whilst ranting…
