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.

Facts, Fakes and Featured Realities: Ethics and Liabilities of Stories for the Future

When I was a child, I used to make up a lot of stories about my life. Astonished, people would report them to my parents, who urged me to tell only true stories and to stick to facts. While growing up, I was first shocked to understand how scientifically established truth is by essence relative to questions asked at a certain time, in a certain space, in specific constellations of convictions, beliefs and power. By the time I understood that even ethical big norms like the universal human rights were part of a much bigger system of power, I was long time an adult.

One of the oldest questions of mankind is "What can I know"? We build knowledge through experience and understanding. Understanding though, is a never ending process of interpretation, a game of doubt and trust: Is this the whole story? What is hiding? Why? Is it maybe totally different? In order to be able to act, to take the many decisions shaping our lives past, present and future, we need to query and trust over and over again the stories of reality. We have a very vital need for truth. This may sound trivial.

Yet, this question went a long way down through centuries of philosophy and is now living a highly controversial peak-time with the actual debates about post factual times. But hands on heart: there is nothing new about disputes on what is fact and what is fake, nothing new about conspiracy theories, biased scientific research, political demagogy. What is new is the distressing impact they have on the global world.

The filters helping to decide which news or story should be trustworthy seem to have vanished. Their period of validity dramatically shrinks while they are reduced to being mere consumer products. In this workshop I propose to work out together playful ways of rebuilding and strengthen trust in our capacities to understand reality, explore truth and take action. We will find out more about which kind of stories we want to stand for and how much of the explanatory gap left open by narrative discourse helps engage people. The process will be collective, co-creative and framed by a creativity challenge.