Collaborative Story Weaver

Collaborative Story Weaver – what does this mean to me?

I used to say it takes a community to raise a business – and after working with academics and third sectors I am coming more and more to the realisation that community and connection is needed more than ever if we are to thrive as a human race and as a planet. So how does a Collaborative Story Weaver enter into this equation?

We remember better through stories rather than cold and brutal facts. Those memory magicians … they weave stories around the items they need to recall, make memorable connections between random objects. We not only make memory connections with stories, we make human connections. After all, Aesop’s Fables are simply stories that relate the human condition as a transfer of knowledge (and sometimes warnings). Grimm’s Fairy Tales, especially in their original uncensored forms, were tales told to warn children of the dangers out in the world. After all, a child often doesn’t listen to their boring old parent when they’re told about stranger danger, but told as a tale such as Little Red Riding Hood the understanding might not explicitly be there but their subconscious will absorb and remember.

Things are more “fun” when told as a story. Less “preachy”. We can often express things in a story which are hard to do otherwise. It removes us slightly from the action, which can make things, especially the very personal, feel easier to share. And that sharing can enable us to see, feel, and understand other points of view, other experiences, other desires and fears.

I see the role of a Collaborative Story Weaver as someone who facilitates the creation and sharing of these stories, someone who helps others find deeper understanding of themselves and each other, as a catalyst for future collaborations which enable a better future for our society, our humanity, our planet.

Funding and funders often can feel like a box we, as researchers and as organisations, have to fit into. Sometimes the squeezing of their needs into our desires can dilute the relevance and impact of what we know truly needs to be done. We chase the money because we have to, that is the world as it is, but in the chase we can head in the wrong direction and end up in places where the impact is not the right impact, not as strong, not as relevant. In the initial excitement of the chase we forget to pack the right implements, the right supplies for healthy sustenance and survival and only midway through, or even at the end, do we realise what we have forgotten, what was truly needed and necessary.

A Collaborative Story Weaver can help you to understand what is desired and needed before the chase even starts. Help you to turn that headlong and heedless chase into something more deliberate and relevant. Help you to create the right impact in the right place, in the right way, and at the right time.

Those I work with know we need to work together in order to create meaningful and impactful change; understand that all is connected and that those connections are important. Through community and collaborations we can create a better future for everyone and everything. Through storytelling we can work towards improving these three Cs – Community, Connection, Collaboration.

If you’d like to learn more please connect with me.