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The many forms of stories-for-change
If you’ve read our guide on “Storytelling and Social Change,” you know about some of the many forms that stories-for-change take. Here’s a sampling of the diverse forms.
- Performance – Cornerstone Theater and Theatre of the Oppressed.
- Film – documentaries used in engagement campaigns organized by Active Voice.
- Story-sharing booths and websites – The HIV Story Project and Nation Inside.
- Web videos – The Center for Digital Storytelling.
- Story circles – such as practiced by Junebug Productions and Roadside Theater.
- Radio – Out Loud Radio.
- Publications – the books of the Neighborhood Story Project and Voice of Witness.
- Oral history – Housing is a Human Right video and audio programs.
- Walking tours – youth-led tours in Boston’s now-defunct MyTown.
- Exhibitions – GLBT History Museum and the Underground Railroad Living Museum.
- Journalism – Renaissance Journalism Center, or the cell phone journalism of VozMob.
- Story-based video games – such as those featured on Games For Change.
- Assorted other forms with narrative elements – the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, “The Montgomery Story” comic book, and more.
Everybody tells stories, but most of us can use some help in learning how to tell stories better. For that purpose, there are groups that do training in telling personal and community stories to effect social change, such as the Center for Story-Based Strategy, the New Organizing Institute‘s trainings in “Public Narrative,” or Narativ.