WELCOME
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WELCOME
This portfolio is a repository for my work as a storyteller with young people during 2013-2017. For information about more recent performances and storytelling projects please see the following locations:
- My staff profile at York St John University, where I work as Lecturer in Performance and Senior Research Associate in Ecological Justice.
- The Suitcase Stories website, sharing the learning from a recent project exploring climate adaptation through storytelling with young people.
- Details of my long-form storytelling show Sweeney Untethered and a trailer for Astray, the double bill of which it formed a part. During 2020-23 the show has toured (interrupted by Covid) to York Theatre Royal, Rich Mix, Theatre Deli, the University of York and Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival.
- My book for arts practitioners, teachers and youth workers: Storytelling in Participatory Arts with Young People: the gaps in the story, published in 2020 by Routledge.
MANIFESTO
I start from the position that young people benefit from genuine, ‘I-Thou’ dialogue with caring adults, that society is enriched by such open-ended encounter with adolescents, but that this is difficult to achieve in institutional settings. Thus different social languages are needed from those of everyday communication in institutions.
The sparseness of story makes it inherently responsive to context, in that it requires what Shonaleigh Cumbers calls ‘rehydration’ in each setting: a transposition to the time, place and particular context of each telling. The storyteller must, however, be sparing and leave gaps for the listeners to stitch the story to their own experience. Since the storyteller can only call on her own experiential vocabulary to perform this delicate task, and the listeners can only call on theirs to fill in the gaps, and these two processes are often simultaneous and reflexive, what results is a dialogue ‘in another room’ between their respective knowledges. This ‘other room’ is a bounded place in which different discourses meet; thus the boundaries of worldviews and the existence of alternatives become clearer, and there can be negotiation to create new meanings and (imperfectly) shared understandings.
The story-world is a place where all present can operate on a higher and more equal plane of understanding, because of the innate human fluency with narrative. No-one’s knowledge is sufficient and everyone’s is necessary, thus not even the storyteller can know her way around at the outset, nor can she have preordained goals for what should happen there. The institution's own aims may influence the storytelling encounter, but its strength lies in transcending these - in creating something singular in the space between singular individuals - and perhaps leaving the institution itself altered.
Moreover, the story-world is a place no-one can be forced to enter, or to stay in once there, and the ultimate dampener of the storyteller’s hubris is the onus on her to ask the listeners for the gift of their listening. Thus there will be many occasions when there is no meeting of ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, no real dialogue, sometimes because listeners are not disposed to listen, and sometimes because the storyteller puts her blinkers on and navigates the story-world using her own pre-planned route, or seeks to bind listeners into it against their will. She cannot rely on the ‘magical’ connection of storytelling. Nor can she force a critical or ‘dynamic’ engagement with the ideas a story implies. It is only when she is aware of both these possibilities that a ‘dialogic’ mode of storytelling can result.
The muscles being exercised are those of developing a responsible discourse of causalities, of recognising the ultimate unfathomability of the world while assuming the role of one who can help to shape it with others.
The sparseness of story makes it inherently responsive to context, in that it requires what Shonaleigh Cumbers calls ‘rehydration’ in each setting: a transposition to the time, place and particular context of each telling. The storyteller must, however, be sparing and leave gaps for the listeners to stitch the story to their own experience. Since the storyteller can only call on her own experiential vocabulary to perform this delicate task, and the listeners can only call on theirs to fill in the gaps, and these two processes are often simultaneous and reflexive, what results is a dialogue ‘in another room’ between their respective knowledges. This ‘other room’ is a bounded place in which different discourses meet; thus the boundaries of worldviews and the existence of alternatives become clearer, and there can be negotiation to create new meanings and (imperfectly) shared understandings.
The story-world is a place where all present can operate on a higher and more equal plane of understanding, because of the innate human fluency with narrative. No-one’s knowledge is sufficient and everyone’s is necessary, thus not even the storyteller can know her way around at the outset, nor can she have preordained goals for what should happen there. The institution's own aims may influence the storytelling encounter, but its strength lies in transcending these - in creating something singular in the space between singular individuals - and perhaps leaving the institution itself altered.
Moreover, the story-world is a place no-one can be forced to enter, or to stay in once there, and the ultimate dampener of the storyteller’s hubris is the onus on her to ask the listeners for the gift of their listening. Thus there will be many occasions when there is no meeting of ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, no real dialogue, sometimes because listeners are not disposed to listen, and sometimes because the storyteller puts her blinkers on and navigates the story-world using her own pre-planned route, or seeks to bind listeners into it against their will. She cannot rely on the ‘magical’ connection of storytelling. Nor can she force a critical or ‘dynamic’ engagement with the ideas a story implies. It is only when she is aware of both these possibilities that a ‘dialogic’ mode of storytelling can result.
The muscles being exercised are those of developing a responsible discourse of causalities, of recognising the ultimate unfathomability of the world while assuming the role of one who can help to shape it with others.