Social Presencing Theatre meets Storytelling: Re-authoring futures through the body

Can our bodies tell stories? And how can we embody our future?

During this two hour experienced based introduction workshop, we will dive into the narrative world of our bodies.
Both on a personal and an organizational level we often find solutions for challenges based on our experiences from the past. Often we rely on our minds, disregarding the wisdom of our bodily experiences. The methods of the Social Presencing Theatre (SPT) enable us to learn from our future possibilities through the knowledge of our bodies. They show where individuals or groups are stuck today, where they could be going tomorrow, and what the real issues are in moving from here to there.

During the workshop you will experience individual and group embodied practices to enhance the perception of your own story as well as the stories of social systems.

Activating your embodied knowledge, you will gain new insights and find new expressions for challenges you or your community currently faces.

This workshop is for anyone who wants to learn how to use the body as a powerful tool for transforming current stories into future possibilities.

Tough times: how to look up when you´re face down

If we are brave enough often enough, we will fail. When we strive for something that matters to us, the only certainty is that we will face adversity, fear and failure. Every story worth telling has difficult parts in it. This is the part of story we very often leave out, try to forget and deny as soon as we get out of it. And yet, this is the part where the magic happens – our failure and our crisis is a start of a revolution. To re-author our future, the first and necessary step is to own the hard parts of our story.

We will dive into the Rising Strong™ process, developed by the researcher/storyteller dr. Brené Brown. People as story-making animals will, in the absence of data, inevitably make up stories. When times are tough, the stories we make up will either keep us down or support us in rising stronger. In the process of rising strong, we go through three steps that correspond to the Hero's Journey. Act 1 is the reckoning, where we get curious about our emotions when we get triggered. Act 2 is the rumble, where we really dive into the meaning behind our SFD (shitty first draft) of the stories we make up. This is the hard part, facing the challenge and overcoming the crisis. What used to work does not work anymore and the rumble requires that we change. Act 3 is the revolution. We take the learnings from our story and let the process become practice. We have owned our story and now hold the pen to write the ending.

The Rising Strong™ process can be applied to anything from seeing our boss frown to a major business loss, from failing a deadline to mass lay-offs, from a hurtful comment of our spouse to dealing with death of a loved one. The process is the same.

Learning Histories: how a multi-perspective view on past events helps to re-author the future

In this workshop we will explore a special kind of story telling known as 'learning histories'. Developed in the 1990s in the wake of the theory of the learning organization at M.I.T. Boston, the theory and method of learning histories has found many applications worldwide. In this workshop we will focus on two different applications of the method as developed in Germany (Karin Thier, Christine Erlach) and Holland (Rik Peters). After a short exposition of the two applications (in organisations and in the scientific literature), we will lead the audience via a critical debate to two of the main techniques employed in the learning histories, focussing on the crucial art of questioning and listening. During our workshop, the participants will practise the method in an “in depth interview exercise” to be conducted in small groups. In the harvesting round, we focus on the function of questioning in learning histories.

How to listen to discover inspiring stories where you least expect it

You don't have to be a good presenter to tell a good story. Inspiring ideas and innovation can be anywhere. The workshop is about how to listen for hidden stories and innovative ideas from people who are not polished presenters.

We'll offer an experiential workshop of sharing and listening.

You will gain insights from the latest research on listening and experience its magic. We’ll also share our experience of coaching people to connect with their own inspiring stories while listening to how to engage and build trust with their audience. Come and be surprised with one of your own stories while learning to inspire others to do the same.

Re-authoring your story with the Story-Canvas

At certain points in life we ask ourselves: Why am I here? Why do I have to face this challenge? Am I the right person for this job, to lead the team, to change things? Which way to go?

Story-Telling and Story-Listening can provide a meaningful conversation and reflection on our values and choices in life.Re-authoring our own story enables us to see things differenty, to change our behaviour and become better leaders.

The workshop introduces the Story-Canvas; a framework to work on your own story (or the one of a client) which is easy to learn and provides access to deeper questions and meaningful conversations about biographies and career-paths. The Story-Canvas can easily be applied to agile methods and New Work culture. The Canvas also works as part of a leadership-training.

After a quick introduction on the basics of Story-Telling and Story-Listening, participants will work in pairs of two with the Story-Canvas. Stories are shared with the group at the end of the workshop.

Re-authoring the future of Tourism / Travel

Participants will hear the story of a future in tourism/travel that is being re-authored as we speak. The story is currently unfolding in the governmental Tourism Flanders Office and its Holiday Participation Centre.

You will discover how Appreciative Inquiry, Generative Journalism, the Re-authoring lens and practices and Sensemaker all came together to facilitate ways of seeing and being that re-ignited the dignity of all that participates. You will taste some of these practices through moments that will be created in the workshop.

Lastly, you will also be introduced and invited to the Connect Your Story project and an exciting StoryWeaver training that all paly in this forest of possibilities.

Workshop Hosts

 

Sherlock Holmes and the Things of Tomorrow

Sherlock Holmes and the things of tomorrow: A collaborative storytelling game to reflect on emergent technologies and future scenarios. Imagine a murder in the year 2100. And you are the police detective who is called to solve it.

Together with your team you inspect the crime-scene. You gather clues and reconstruct what has happened in this world full of new technologies. This is the setup for a collaborative storytelling game that offers a intuitive, playful and fun way to reflect on future technologies and how we think they might influence us.

Instead of a rational approach to create and discuss future scenarios the game allows every player to immerse himself into the future. Each player gets a better understanding of how he and his team see the future. And this shared understanding helps them to rewrite the future of their organisation, business or brand.

I use the game as an entertaining element in creative and innovation workshops. It is a light adaptation of „Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things“ developed by the Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University. It takes about 90-120 minutes depending on the size of the group playing it. It is best played with 10-15 players.

Hakuna Mañana - How to create the in-between times and design future?

Paulo Coelho, while describing three symptoms of killing our dreams mentions… lack of time. He says provokingly in his blog “The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything.“

And I would love to invite all the busy and less busy persons to join an interactive narrative workshop focusing on the question „How to create the in-between times and design future?“

Further questions to explore are: "How long does last your one minute?", "What can you do to introduce more rubato in your life?", "How are you going to spend myday in the future?", and some more. The workshop is designed beyond storytelling. It is based on story sharing and collective harvesting as well as inspirations regarding intercultural time aspects by Phillip Zimbardo, Edward Hall, Robert Levine and… Alice in Wonderland.

The sun is still in my eyes. Reflecting on the constructiveness of life.

This workshop is based on a movie project with the Berlin Artist Wilhelm Singer. It will consist of three parts: 1) a short talk between me and the artist (preferably in a dark room, with some some light spots in it. 2) the screening of the movie (which is about 18 min long) and 3) a moderated discussion about the movies approach on how we construct identity, about the singular, the truth and death on one side and the lifes opportunity of florishing plurals. About our re-auhtoring the past and what it makes with our future possibilities.

Workshop Hosts