Social impact has to do with how people live and live together, how they interact with each other and with their environment. The Storytelling Centre Foundation contributes to strengthening on an individual and a collective level. We use storytelling in the following areas of social change: to resolve conflicts, to make taboos debatable and to stimulate diversity.
‘The enemy is the one whose story you don’t know ‘. This is a spot on statement by Gene Knudsen Hoffman (1919-2010), certainly in today’s society where we take less and less time to listen to each other’s stories. In fact, stories about each other are often used to stir up fear of the other. As a result, we are slowly but surely entering a society where fear is the prominent factor, rather than having an understanding of each other.
The Storytelling Centre turns this around, so on the basis of stories we can:
Fortunately, more and more organisations are finding out storytelling is a great means to bring people together. Because storytelling is about both the narrator ánd the listener and precisely because it brings them into contact with each other, storytelling projects create bonding. And it is precisely this bonding and connection that is necessary to work towards an understanding and peaceful society.
This introduction to social impact is only a small example of how storytelling contributes to social change. Check our blog posts on social impact for more information on how storytelling can transform conflict, taboo situations and diversity issues.
Well-known fairy tales have been greatly toned down over time, so we have become accustomed to stories and outlooks on life that are guaranteed to have a ‘happy ending’. However, clinging desperately to such a happy ending poses a danger…
What happens to you when all your certainties are swept away in an instant and you are left entirely to your own devices? Personal and compelling theatre takes you on a universal journey to explore human resilience in times of profound uncertainty.
Mona Keijzer knows better than anyone how to summarise the complex issues facing the Netherlands in a few simple soundbites. But behind those appealing and straightforward messages lies exactly the same strategy that ‘manosphere’ influencers use to win over their audience.
How narratives of dominance have a very strong influence on our society, and how you’re starting to see this more and more clearly, for example in the Morocco v Netherlands match.
People often have a choice as to which story they associate with an event or a memory. We can decide what value and what meaning we attach to it. Which story do you choose?
In this article, Arjen Barel reflects on the concept of the ‘single story’; the reduction of an identity to a single narrative.
It’s a question that comes up in almost every training session or presentation: “What is the real difference between applied storytelling and therapy?”
The plain truth can be woven into a narrative to make it more appealing and easier for audiences to accept, but the narrative must never obscure the truth.
When slick marketing types use the term storytelling only as a means to sell stuff you don’t need with bullshit stories, where is the authenticity?
There’s nothing worse than ending a story with ‘the moral of this story is…’. After all, it should speak for itself. But what if there is no sense of morality left at all?
Stories in policy making Storytelling is hip and happening and its usefulness is slowly making its way into government policy-making,
Would you recognise the two main sources of conflict? We love conflict! In recent years, we learned that you can
