The Great Turning: the powerful story of our time

Our current perception of reality can be described through the lens of three different stories of power. The story of Business as usual tells us that there is little need to change the way we live. The story of Great Unraveling draws attention to the disasters that Business as Usual has been causing. Finally, the story of the Great Turning focuses on the emergence of new and creative human responses to the challenges of our time.

In this Workshop, I invite you to dive into the powerful realm of the Great Turning.  After a short theoretical exploration of Joanna Macy’s “Work that reconnects”, we will inform our minds and bodies by experiencing our present lives within larger contexts of time. We will perform a Deep Time ritual in which present people will encounter people from the seventh generation in the future.

Together we will co-create a space in which we can feel the power of acting like ancestors of future generations. We will reflect on our experience and on how we can embody and translate it into our daily lives.

Storydevelopment in an Agile Leadership Journey

Agility is not only about tools and skills, but more importantly about an agile mindset leaders need to develop. To be able to create a compelling Story of Change is key to transformation.  Ellen Herb developed with Jaana Rasmussen and other experts a Leadership Training programme that has been running successfully in a German Company for 3 years. In their workshop, Ellen and Jaana will first talk about the programme as a case for enabling leaders to change mindset and truly develop agile thinking. In the practical part, participants will develop their own story of development and/or transformation with guidance of Ellen and Jaana in a playful, agile way.

Mythic Seduction: Mythological structures of cinematic narration

Cinema can be defined as a medium of seduction. Narrative cinema confronts us with situations, decisions and narratives that might appear disturbing in real life. Yet we are willingly accept this cinematic seduction and enjoy where it might lead us.

In the heart of this cinematic seduction lies the mythic narrative. Mythology is an endless field of inspiration for screen writers to find archetypical and highly effective plotlines, quest models and character prototypes. Especially within Hollywood cinema this mythical substructure is regularly used to huge effect. At the same time mythology reflects society and can be used as a pattern to analyze cinematic narratives.

The master class ‘Mythic Seduction’ will define the terms mythology and seduction within the context screen writing and comment on mythology based theories by Joseph Campbell, Roland Barthes and others. Finally the affirmative and the critical mytho-poetical approach will be discussed along a choice of film examples.

Embodiment journey to the power of narratives

Welcome to a co-creative workshop in which the depth of our own thinking and action logic becomes tangible in terms of the narratives of power awareness and self-mastery.

After a short theoretical exploration regarding the  "Ego-Development-Profile", we invite you to a deep embodiment journey via ‘Systemic Constellation Work’  - in order to explore and sense the stages of Ego-Maturation in relation to its underlying thinking and action logic.

With our senses and bodies we enter the ‘knowing fields’ by the Systemic Constellation and explore the collective wisdom behind the Ego-Development-Stages.

We discover the stories of power - inwardly and outwardly – behind each Ego-Development stage. We transfer the insights to our personal and professional journey as storytellers. We draw conclusions from the findings and transfer them to the transformation work as storytellers.

Strong Story Short: Storytelling for Democracy

The political mind is barely influenced by facts and mostly formed by emotions and stories. We tend to believe whatever we're able to imagine. Therefore pictures always outdo numbers. For a long time racists and antidemocrats behaved like dumb idiots. But that has changed. Extreme right wing parties and politicians have become brilliant storytellers.

Their stories aren't long but effective. "The boat is full" needs only four words to create a whole imaginable picture and a whole story in your mind. They have learned how to play.

Do we know it as well? What's our story about the strength of democracy? What's our story about the gains from multilateralism? Why are we fighting their stories with numbers? The truth is we no longer know how to tell the democratic political systems story. We have no picture in mind.

That's what we're going to do. In the workshop we're going to create strong stories as short as possible to tell what we're fighting for. It's worth a try.

Solution-oriented and Constructive Journalism: Towards Stories of Courage

In this workshop, participants will learn about the constructive approach in journalism. Why does this trend currently exist, and how do media deal with it? What is the power of journalism, and how can we use constructive journalism to use this power wisely?

The participants are invited to bring along their own topics, to research them, and to get to discuss them in a conference, as it is often done in news portals. A focus will lie on the power of headlines. Afterwards, we will discuss how to start the research for a story and why it is important to keep certain criteria of constructive journalism in mind during your whole research. What is being tried to convey to the reader?

In this way, the participants should find a new, constructive approach to stories and get to know the power of constructiveness.

Creating Desirable Futures: Introducing Strategic Time Travelling

In this workshop we will travel to the future and learn how to explore, create and implement Desirable Futures for specific markets, industries or topics. The method we are introducing is called Future Modeling, a combination of scientific foresight tools, visionary storytelling and concrete strategic decisions to make your organization or services future-ready.

Future Modeling is also a skillset and active training capability for leaders and change makers. The participants will learn how to use the 9 standardized steps of the Future Modeling framework to create systemic scenarios and shape positive futures.

After the introduction and exploration of the framework we will reflect about how we use different kinds of creative storytelling throughout the process to empower people to become an active part of creating Desirable Futures.

Storytelling work: Personal craft, purpose and community

What is your story as a storytelling practitioner?

The aim of this workshop is to validate the work of storytelling practitioners by calling attention to the themes and patterns of their public story.

In the workshop, we will use story sharing activities to allow participants to be aware of their personal and public profiles in relation to their purpose and community of practice. Through the method ​Collaborative Story CraftTM​ ,​ and the support of story mediators the activities will incorporate various voices into a holistic story. Once themes are identified and validated by the participants, metaphors emerge. The method aims to identify commonalities in people’s stories so that differences can potentially become assets or learning opportunities.

We will enable community engagement through story sharing activities for perspective exchange.

Overall, this workshop is an invitation to look at your story in the mirror. Being mindful of your own story allows you to see new possibilities in your work and community. The event is suitable for anyone, mainly storytelling practitioners and those seeking to experience authentic stories or how their personal story connects with their audience and their own purpose.

Powered by Conflicts – How to create vivid conflicts for brands

The power of stories is mainly defined and fundamentally influenced by conflicts. Conflicts are the driving forces of stories. It's that simple: No conflict – no story.

The session is about the creation and cultivation of conflicts for brands. After a short introduction into the world of brand conflicts including a case study, participants will be split up into small groups and apply an innovative tool called Brand Conflict Framework. The framework includes aspects such as conflict types, semantic spaces for conflicts, set of emotions, conflict barometer etc. This approach reframes branding and provides a new perspective on how to define and articulate a brand. Working with this framework, the groups will create systematically vivid conflict scenarios for given brands. Finally, the groups will pitch their concepts in order to share their thinking with all groups. 

What’s the key take away? Participants will learn how to work systematically with the concept of conflicts in the marketing environment. Participants will also get a better understanding of how conflicts might be valuable for brands.

Empowering your story with Data: Storywriting with predictive analytics

If story activates the emotional centers of the brain, data activates the logic centers. Activating both at the same time can be incredibly powerful — if done correctly.

Whilst diving into the ocean of data, we are going to see amazing data analytics, stories and stunning visualisations creating powerful opportunities for the future. In society and even in business there is a lack of motivation and disposition to deal with data. Transforming the general impression of data analytics into something fun, help- and meaningful is our main objective.

With a joyful approach, we will…

1) help participate to overcome the number phobia by showing interesting

recent cases of data journalism, visualisations

2) explain people’s interest in data on a psychological basis in a fun way

3) show extraordinary examples of storytelling based on data and how it should be done properly

4) help participants to also identify good and bad data and see were it is used to manipulate

What will the participants get out of the workshop?

They will learn about the beauty of data, why people long for facts and numbers and how this makes data an excellent basis for storytelling. We won't stop there: They’ll get a glimpse of what predictive analytics can do and how these can be used as a tool to understand, retell and shape the future.

Plus:

Every participant gets the chance to create her or his own little empowering idea/ data story in our workshop and take it home afterwards!

Deep Structure Storytelling: How to map 1000 human wonders with artificial intelligence (AI) to forge next-generation stories

PROLOGUE

Digital transformation and with it the arrival of AI is fundamentally changing our lives. The implications that disruptive technologies will have on our society are hard to assess. Especially AI scares people. Whose jobs will it replace? Who will be monitored on whose behalf? And what the heck are the Chinese doing with the biggest social engineering project mankind has ever seen? It seems we're going full speed ahead into an unknown future, losing our orientation with every mile we travel. Old systems of order get devalued and new ones have yet to be formed. In short: We are knee-deep in an epochal paradigm shift.

DIALOGUE

The sovereignty to interpret data will become the factor of power of the 21st century global information culture. Interpreting data means forging narratives. Narratives that define our horizon of perception and simultaneously constitute new systems of order. As storytellers and narrative experts, we are at the forefront of this development and at the epicenter of social tectonics. Can we continue to create value-based systems of orientation with narratives that give meaning? And if so, how? Or is everything lost? Are we stuck in a swamp of information manipulation and fake data? Are AI and Data Mining just the last nail in the coffin?

The workshop is a joint attempt to find answers to the most pressing questions of the coming years:

Which forces and narratives unfold in an information culture dominated by AI and data mining? How will they shape the reality of our lives?

Who will be the losers, who will be the winners? What opportunities and risks will we face?

How and where do we, as narration experts, use AI tools ourselves.

Content Workshop

• An introduction where and how AI is used today: Social engineering, sentiment analysis, recognition of semantic depth structures in data, etc.

• We experiment with a modern AI profiler, extract psychological profiles from texts, try to interpret them and implement the results with a storytelling framework.

• We explore the basic conditions and possible applications for telling stories with AI and Data Mining and work out a catalogue of requirements together.

• We develop and sign an ethical guiding star code for narrative work with AI and publish the document on the net as a co-creative open source project.

Goals

• The participants will have taken a first look at the hidden depth structures in texts (and other data) and have developed a feeling for potential.

• The participants will be able to experiment with AI tools themselves and gain practical experience of what AI can do and how they can be seamlessly integrated into their existing work.

• The participants will be sensitized to the risks and opportunities of the new technology and inspired to help shape sustainable narratives at the interface of technology, business and society.

EPILOGUE

AI is not able to "understand" complex contexts, nor does it have the ability to mathematically reproduce empathy. Understanding data, interpreting it correctly and translating it into everyday life with the necessary portion of emotional intelligence is and will remain the domain of humans for the foreseeable future. To be more precise: The domain of storytellers, narration experts and narration architects.

Story Up↑ Your Artefact: Story-based performances and collective journeys as powerful short intervention

At the last Beyond Storytelling Conferences and on some other occasions, we had the chance to offer Story Up↑ Your Artefact open sessions. Their beauty resides in their improvisational character (nothing is planned ahead of time), the collective performance (everybody plays a part) related to a very specific place and theme (the ones defined by the conference) and, last but not least, the video which stays with us as a result.

In this workshop, we open the tool box, thus inviting people to co-create ideas for a Story Up↑ Your Artefact and to design the process. After a vote for the best idea, we will use one of the open sessions to realize it. The workshop will be structured as follows:

1. Introduction to the concept and viewing of one or two of the past projects.

2. Introduction to the technical requirements, the way to organize the process in 90 min. and the software for postproduction.

3. Walk through the place and collection of inspirations with a good range of small story-practices: free association, haiku, one-shot-story, human machine, improv theater techniques, heroe's journey, fairy tale..

4. Creative work in small groups.

5. Celebration of the results and vote.

6. Reflexion: What is the power of those Artefacts? In which context could they unfold their impact? Can we imagine a collective action after BST 2020?

Story Up↑ Your Artefact has been conceived as a playful, entertaining yet sense-making experience, which short-time design can easily be adapted to a wide range of contexts, from workshops to team-days. It fosters out-of-the-box thinking, connection to surroundings and activates all senses.

The process in itself is an extremely empowering one, because it involves a whole group, working with its body, brain, heart, intuition altogether. Everybody is present, everybody is being heard. Nothing is ridiculous. The past experiences were truly jaw-dropping ones when it came to the celebration in plenary. At the same time and as does Art / Performance Art by its essence, it can unfold a very subversive energy. Through the resonance with the place, the group may eventually come to feel discursive fields sheltered there and use the Artefact to reframe them. Last but not least, this workshop could operate as an invitation to engage with stories of power in place and design a collective action beyond the time of the conference.

Navigate the swimmer: find those words that guide your choices

Since we know ‘words create worlds’, it is essential to find those words we need in our (working) life to move closer towards our desired future world (or Ikigai). This world is different for every individual, these words are very personal. But once we found them, they can guide us to a more satisfying work life.

We all know the feeling of unease, running behind our endless to-do list and wonder why we are doing what we do. We all know the feeling of getting stuck into tasks which are necessary but suck our energy. Don’t we all want to enjoy our work and feel the flow? Make sense of what we are doing and see what we can contribute to the world?

In this workshop we will reflect on those things that give us energy, make us grow and use them as a guide towards our future.

The workshop is aimed at everybody who is willing to reflect on his/her life and work situation, to get clear what is important to take as a next step. Not only for people who are unhappy in their job. It helps to focus on the next step, appreciating what is good and seeing where improvement can be made.

Are you ready to dive?

The harvested words will guide you in your journey:

• You will have a tool to visualize those words present in your work (we tend not to see what is there) so you can appreciate them.

• The tool will also help you in identifying the missing links, the regions for improvement. So those words can bring you in action to take the first step.

You are welcome to join and swim with us. Depending on the water you are in, you can decide if you want to let yourself float, if you need to swim against the current or get on the shore and dive in another water that suits more your needs.

Storytelling at the Watering Hole: listening, engaging and re-distributing power to mold organizational culture

Today, business leaders are more aware than ever of the correlation between a company’s productivity and the health of its culture. In the private sector, strong, positive organizational cultures are synonymous with growth and sustainability. And at the heart of culture is story, which grows out of a community's dominant narratives.

Yet, these dominant narratives are not always the same as the stories that reach the ears of top-level decision makers. To discover the stories actually shaping employees’ attitudes, thoughts and behavior, we must go first to the watering hole of that organization. A watering hole is a physical or psychological space where community members gather naturally each day, and the story exchanges that take place at a watering hole reveal the narratives that mold, shape and build organizational culture.

These stories, however, often go unnoticed and unheard. Business leaders don’t often have the capacity to recognize the importance of these daily story exchanges for coherent leadership, and if leaders don’t create spaces to listen, those who aren’t in power are only able to tell their stories among themselves, not to the top lines. When employees then hear stories from their leaders, in meetings and town halls, videos, and communication strategies, which don't reflect or partially reflect the stories told around their watering hole, the dissonance leads to cycles of distrust and disengagement. A human-centered and healthy company culture must therefore be a story-centered culture: one where the stories of all employees, on all levels, are heard and addressed.

And that is the aim of this workshop: to explore how we can help redistribute power and take steps towards creating story-centered organizational cultures by finding and reclaiming the watering holes. Specifically, we will do activities in large group, small group and partner format to explore and uncover:

1. the raw power behind the storytelling done collectively and naturally at every company's watering hole(s) and the implications of these stories for an organization's culture, effectiveness and future

2. how the watering hole can be found and reclaimed positively, through analyzing a case study

3. three specific techniques you can use to train leaders to listen, engage with and address the stories individuals tell at their company watering hole(s) in order to bring about coherent and positive organizational culture change.

Creative Ways to Harvest and Share Stories

Some stories are like matches, they burn bright for a moment and can never be heard again. Others need to be remembered, retold, and spread. For groups who are shaping their culture by shaping their narrative, it is important that the stories stay top of mind. If you are curious about using stories as a group’s collective memory, this session is for you. Especially if you are concerned about the integrity of stories. No one likes their personal story to become the slogan for some campaign they don’t believe in. In this session, we will explore:

- how to spot the stories;

- how to shape the stories;

- how to share the stories.

And how to do this in a way that feels creative, fun, and authentic. At the end of the session, we will harvest our own story, and debrief the session as a #DialogueExperiment.

Turning unhappy endings into stories of power: grief and forgiveness in organizations

This workshop explores the difficult experiences of grief in organizations. We will explore both the story of power and the power of story in situations of loss, defeat and disappointment; and look for ways to overcome these difficult experiences as a community and as individuals.

What doesn't kill us, doesn't always make us stronger; if we do not find ways to recover, it might even make us weaker and less equipped to cope with adversity. We run from grief and forgiveness and have difficulty letting go, because in organizations grief mostly remains quiet, unseen and denied. Difficult experiences, defeats and losses might lead to a feeling of powerlessness and smallness, they might impact our self-worth and our trust in other people, especially those in power.In the workshop we will use storytelling and storylistening techniques to step into our power even when we need to go through grief.

In organizations, grief often isn't tangible. It's not necessarily about a loss in the »real world«, it might be about a loss of an idea, a dream, an ideal, a perception – a loss of a story we believed in and built our world around. Grief is also about longing and yearning for something we cannot have or we might never get. In situations of grief over ideas we have about power we long for somebody powerful to take care of us and protect us, we also feel lost and out of control. Grief is also a big part of forgiveness.

For forgiveness to happen, something has to die. In organizations, what has to die is the idea of who we were as an organizations. The old story needs to die and be buried before the hew story can be born.We might use different storytelling techniques to explore; participants will get the opportunity to explore their own situations of grief and forgiveness at work (with an emphasis on boundaries and not opening what we cannot close within the 90 minutes), we might discuss a case-study of a client, and use action based techniques of storytelling to bring about new endings to difficult stories.

Stories of Change Writeshop – Learn to write and write to learn

The stories of change writeshop offers a guided writing experience in which you have the opportunity to write and share a story of change that you experienced, and feel is worth sharing. About a change in which power played a critical role, either for the good or as an obstruction for the desired change.

Writing is best learned through writing. This mini-writeshop introduces you to a collective, creative and structured approach to reflect, learn and document stories about social change. The step-by-step method guides you through a series of prompts that enable you to freely download all the ingredients of your story. This includes both tangible elements (such as location, characters and outcomes), as well as intangible aspects (such as feelings, relationships and hidden agendas).

Short feedback-rounds with co-writers will help you to sharpen your thoughts, get to the essence of the story, inspire each other and gain new insights together. You experience ways to give and receive open, honest and transparent feedback on writing products. By fleshing out a conversation and/or using images, you learn ways to bring your story to live.

“The absolute silence of everyone simultaneously writing on their own stories is magical.”

We start by asking you to zoom in on a situation in which power was a main influencer. In the reflection rounds we will explicitly address this and explore the underlying forces that are at play.

For both gifted writers and those with writer’s block.