The Power in Story

The Power in Story is a set of workshops that explore story in individual, group, and cultural settings and highlight story work as a possible catalyst to internal transformation and community action. When expressing and releasing a personal story, we can activate an internal transformation that renews our personal narrative, how we walk through the world, and lead to community action.

The Power in Story Evening of Exploration

Our introductory Evening of Exploration explores the question “what happens when we re-weave our stories together?” and sensitively explores what can emerge when we unearth these stories and collectively breathe renewed life into them.

We discuss the importance in understanding the influence that our individual and collective stories have on our lives. What are these stories and how do they guide us?

The Power in Story Exploration Series

Facilitated by Aaron Stern and Chrissie Orr, The Power in Story Exploration Series, a three-part series, is designed for people working with story across disciplines and applications, including artists and teaching artists, leaders, therapists, health workers and teachers. It is relevant for all who recognize the capacity of story to enliven and heal, whether experienced story workers or those who want to introduce story into their work.

Through The Power in Story Exploration Series we will look at story as it lives in self, group and community, and the larger systems in which we are all situated, building on each intensive and deepening our capacities as we go.

Throughout the series we explore:

• What is the power in story?

• How can we own our own story, and dwell in it, and come to know ourselves through it?

• There is great stability in the learning spirit. How do we keep that spirit alive in ourselves as we open to others’ stories?

• What is the thread of learning within community? How do we enliven that thread ethically through story?

• As we witness and participate in the movements and changes impacting our community and our planet, what holds us as the story changes?

INTENSIVE 1

Intensive 1 explores how, as story practitioners, we can find the learning thread in ourselves, through our own story, and come to know it clearly. This clarity will enhance our story work in community and how we support others in finding the thread in their own story. At the end of this intensive you will know how story lives in you individually and have a greater understanding of the underlying forces of story and its transformational potential. This can help to advance your story work practice and/or lead to more sanity and stability in your own life.

INTENSIVE 2

Intensive 2 is an exploration of the group’s story: looking collaboratively into themes, patterns, and what is the thread of learning that is revealed as we look at our shared journey. Through practices and exercises, reflection and finding meaning in the direct experience of group story work we will consider the ethics and sensitivity necessary in the gathering and sharing of stories. Intensive 2 is a follow-up to Intensive 1.

INTENSIVE 3

Intensive 3 turns towards community and consideration of working with story in different contexts. Essential in this is consideration of the powerful – and at times insidious – systemic stories that underpin our individual and shared experiences. We explore a variety of work-forms for activating story, processes for reflection and integration, and consider the facilitation of what we call a ‘learning field’ – a context in which the vulnerability of sharing stories is both invited and compassionately supported.

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