“What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘story’?
It reminds me of the tales that grandmother used to tell me when I was a child.”
These were the starting conversation of the three day storycamp held at Narayanghat, Chitwan (Nepal). The camp was a different from other story writing training as it used advanced tools and techniques of storytelling and appreciative inquiry (AI). It intended to make the participants skilled on identifying the stories, content generation and presentation. It was based on constructivism paradigm where participants learned by doing. The camp intended to make the participants knowledgeable about different forms and methods of storytelling in the form of texts, photographs and videos.
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Participants making presentation
Organised by Practical Action, there were altogether 10 participants in the camp, of which five were from Practical Action Chitwan cluster office and five others were from partner organisations. The lead coach of the camp was Mr Saurav Dhakal from the Storycycle, with an expertise on storytelling and presentation. His focus area is promoting storytelling approach to cater positive change on people’s life by using new media tools and technology. Apart from him, we were a team of three in-house trainers from Practical Action communications team to run the camp – including me, Sanjib Chaudhary and Prabin Gurung.
Day one introduced the participants about the basic components of storytelling, photography and videography. Apart from that they also pondered upon their true passion and strengths, and made plans about their far away future. One of the exercises on the day was given as homework to the participants where they had to assume that they were celebrating their 65th birthday.
The second day commenced with the participants celebrating their assumed 65th birthday. They shared interesting stories of what they believed or hoped they would have achieved by then. It was fascinating to hear their about ambition and expectations from life. Day two was more of a practical day where the participants got the chance to use the learnings from the first day. They were divided in three different groups and went to the different parts of Narayanghat to collect a variety of stories.
In the day three, the participants presented the stories that they collected the previous day. The stories were presented using texts, photographs and videos. It was exciting to see that they had used the tools and techniques, which were discussed in the previous days. It was interesting to witness the visible change in the quality of the products that they presented.
The training summed up by identifying different platforms through which the stories collected and drafted can be shared to a large mass of people or to the intended target audiences. The participants can now work on a shared Google doc, listing their story ideas. The communications team will track the stories in progress and provide the support required.
One of the participants wrote as a feedback to the training, “I liked the way the training has been managed. The method of separating us in different groups and making us involved in the real practical work was very effective learning approach. I loved that fact that we were given the hands-on lessons with focus on practical approach rather than just talking about theory. The camp has made us better storytellers.”
I hope that we will get to hear many stories from these storytellers in the near future.
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A group picture of the camp
