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.

Storytelling in a social media era

In barely a decade, social media has transformed our world, the way we communicate, and our relationships in quite remarkable ways. It still changes and evolves unceasingly. Stories are the way that we process information and make sense of the world. This has gone unchanged for centuries.

What is happening now is that the tools to create stories are exploding. Today people have the expectation to be much more involved and to be part of the story, to create their stories and to co-author. To engage and get engaged. We live now in a culture of connectivity. Borders do not exist in „Social-Mediastan“. The „Netizens“ communicate via Skype, Whats App, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Vlogs, Youtube… all around the world (most parts) 24/7.

Time is negotiable. We can either communicate in real time about everything we want or go back in time. In closed private or in open public networks. We amuse, enchant, empower and enable ourselves with videos, flashmobs, quotes, memes, gifs and DIY instructions.

Storytelling has not only become a strategy to catch the attention of individual recipients. Through social media it has also become a way to break barriers and to make interaction possible, to create an environment for convening and supporting groups, to move crowds and to nudge our creativity, be it for political, business or private reasons. But storytelling in social media also exposes us to audiences which can agressively criticise and in the worst case betray us.

The world has changed social media just as much as social media has changed the world. Social media should not be seen primarily as the list of platforms on which people post, but rather as the content that is being posted on these platforms.