10:05:18 So just a heads up on that and let's go ahead and get started 10:05:36 Alright, Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. 10:05:42 This is asset-based storytelling for nonprofits a Give Local workshop just a quick introduction before we get started. 10:05:50 Closed. captioning is available for anyone that needs that. 10:05:54 It is at the bottom of your toolbar on the zoom screen 10:06:02 And I'd like to start off today with a quick land acknowledgment. 10:06:07 So we would like to acknowledge that this gathering is being held on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish tribes, which include the Nisqually squawks in Puyallup and Snohomish 10:06:16 and Skagit. Among others, we want to pay our respects to elders. 10:06:21 Both, past and present. we recognize that without them we would not be here together. 10:06:26 Today. we encourage you to research the tribes wherever you live. 10:06:32 So. Hi! for those of you that don't know me my name is Mary Lam. 10:06:36 I use she/her pronouns, and for those of you that are listening, I am a young Latina female. 10:06:42 I have brown hair up to my shoulders. I am wearing a plaid jacket today, and I am in my office at the foundation. 10:06:50 So behind me. there are just a few images here hanging up as well as a bookshelf. 10:06:58 I am the philanthropy and communications officer here at the community foundation of South Puget Sound, and my teammate, Melissa and I are happy to help nonprofits with anything that they need as they 10:07:10 prepare for their give local campaign my email is here for you on the screen. 10:07:15 It's Mary at the Community Foundation dot com and you can email me. 10:07:22 And today we are joined by Elaine Vredenburgh. 10:07:26 She is the curator of community storytelling and founder of window seat media. 10:07:32 I do have a quick bio for Elaine as well. 10:07:36 She is an oral historian, multimedia, storyteller, and educator. 10:07:41 She has carried out her work through a variety of roles, as a development director at nonprofit organizations in the South Sound, and a faculty member in the Evergreen State colleges. 10:07:52 Mpa. and evening and weekend studies programs and a community-based learning coordinator at high schools in Albuquerque, Portland, Oregon, and Elaine. 10:08:04 Currently works for Windows Sweet Window seat Media, as its memory archivist holds a bachelor and cultural and community studies from the Evergreen State College and a master's in interdisciplinary studies 10:08:16 folklore, anthropology, and journal journalism from the University of Oregon. 10:08:22 So, Elaine, Thank you so much for joining us today. 10:08:26 And without further ado, I am going to pass it your way and stop sharing my screen. 10:08:34 Great. thank you, Thanks, Mary. it's really wonderful to collaborate with the community foundation. 10:08:43 Again, and to be with you all this morning. I appreciate you taking some time out of your busy days. 10:08:48 I know we're all busy working in the public sector and in the nonprofit sector. 10:08:53 So thanks for taking some time to share the morning with me. 10:08:57 I wanted to just share a little bit more about where I'm coming from with this topic of storytelling so as Mary mentioned. 10:09:06 I. I have this graduate background and this professional training in oral history. 10:09:11 And and folklore and journalism and so I I've always really loved stories, and this is kind of the academic background that I'm coming from and in terms of the folklore aspect of my training 10:09:29 I've always been interested in the many ways that we share our stories. So stories not only from the perspective of like verbally how we share who we are, but the many ways that we share who we are in our identity, so that can 10:09:43 be through the food that we grow and prepare it can be through the dances, through music, through all the rituals and traditions that we participate in those, all of those things share who we are they share identity or history or 10:09:57 heritage so I've been interested in all of those things and that's sort of been my background and where I'm coming from in this field of storytelling I sort of landed in oral history in particular 10:10:07 that's most of the work that I do in the community. 10:10:11 So I facilitate community-based oral history processes and projects in our community. 10:10:17 And I've been doing this work for about 6 or 7 years in the South Sound area, and prior to that, I have worked sort of as a fundraiser in the community. 10:10:29 So as a development director, and that work that I did I really just learned on the job. 10:10:33 So I didn't have necessarily professional training in it I sort of got involved in development work. 10:10:38 It sort of intersected in some ways, in a lot of ways and storytelling. 10:10:44 The storytelling work that I did, and so I was fortunate enough to have a lot of mentors and worked as a development person for about 8 or 10 years locally here. 10:10:52 Sorry sort of bring that lens and have since been teaching in the Mpa program. 10:10:58 Primarily nonprofit storytelling and fundraising to some extent. 10:11:03 So I wanted to also say that I don't necessarily feel like I'm an expert. 10:11:11 I'm a lifelong learner I also feel like you all probably have lots of experience and ideas to bring to our session this morning, so I welcome you to share your own ideas. 10:11:21 And experience as we move through this time together. and I noticed a lot of people. 10:11:29 Here are coming from various nonprofits. We have people in the chat who have mentioned that they are grant writers or in communications, development, or assistants. 10:11:40 Is there anybody else who wants to share in the chat? 10:11:43 Other Other perspectives are coming from other roles they're coming from to this storytelling work beyond sort of the communications and development realm. 10:11:54 There are other folks in the room. You can just or worse. 10:12:01 Say it if you want to just unmute yourself too it's fine 10:12:07 It sounds like you probably have lots of folks who are focusing on fundraising which makes sense because it give local time. 10:12:13 So that's great So for our time together today. 10:12:17 What I was hoping we could do I was just going to share a little bit of some ideas and a framework for thinking about how to sort of widen the lens of our storytelling in our sector. 10:12:30 So we're often focusing a lot on sort of stories of success stories, specifically individuals. 10:12:38 How individuals that we work with overcome challenges and get to the other side through. 10:12:42 You know the support of our organizations. And so I I wanted to spend some time thinking about how we can sort of widen the frame of our stories and thinking about sort of collecting stories of more collective impact. 10:12:57 So how does our organization sort of fit within this larger frame? 10:13:03 You know, in relation to other organizations doing the work that they're doing in the community, how multiple people come together really to tackle problems in our community. 10:13:14 So again, just widening the frame, moving from more of an individualistic frame to more of a collectivist frame of our storytelling. 10:13:20 So I'm gonna offer some ideas around that and then and then I'll invite you to spend some time together. 10:13:29 Either we might stay in the large room or in breakout rooms, depending on how many of us are here. 10:13:34 I have a couple of stories that give you examples of different ways. 10:13:39 The more sort of portrait style storytelling versus the wider frame storytelling around the same story. 10:13:46 So you can see the different impacts of those different kinds of stories. so we'll spend some time looking at those 2 stories. 10:13:53 And then thinking about the impact of them and maybe thinking also doing some brains from work about some of the owns the stories that you're hoping to tell in your organization and using some of those tools. 10:14:03 So it'll just be an opportunity to practice some of the ideas that we'll be sharing today, and I apologize. 10:14:09 I feel like this sun is just kind of coming right through the middle of my face. 10:14:13 So sorry about that. I'll kind of lean to the website So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen 10:14:31 Great and Mary, if you would be so kind as to just let me know if their hands are raised, that would be really helpful. or things happening in the chat can just interact with me. 10:14:47 Yeah, no worries great alright, so we've talked about what we're gonna do today. 10:14:54 So I'm just gonna launch into why stories so I really feel like we're, you know, we're story animals. 10:15:03 I think that you know a lot of the way that we move through the world is through the stories that we tell ourselves about other people. 10:15:12 It's really how it's our process of making meaning around the world around us. 10:15:17 So our stories, really they express some of our most deeply held values and beliefs. 10:15:23 They reinforce a shared sense of identity or purpose or experience. 10:15:27 I think we've all had that experience of maybe going through something in our lives, and then feeling maybe alone in it, and then sharing that and realizing somebody else has experienced the same thing, and you know oftentimes that can be 10:15:41 is pretty empowering because now we realize there's other people that have gone through that, and maybe we want to work together to make change. 10:15:47 So I think that that that app sort of sharing stories to reinforce identity and experience it's really powerful. 10:15:57 I also wanted to share that thinking about stories as both a product and a process. 10:16:04 So in the nonprofit sector, I think they often get caught up in the sort of outputs or the products of our work. 10:16:11 And so in the storytelling realm that would be, you know. 10:16:14 Maybe the written success story that you have on your website or maybe it's a video or the photograph that you took of a client. 10:16:21 Those are all the products, the stories themselves but there's this whole process of creating stories. 10:16:27 There are the questions that you decide to ask your clients in an interview setting. 10:16:33 There's who The person is interviewing that client so who's asking the questions can really impact what kind of response you might get The location of where that interview is taking place? 10:16:44 Maybe you decide you're gonna take you to know you're gonna set up a workshop for people in your community, and there's so they can write their own stories. 10:16:53 But you're also thinking about what kind of prompts you're offering them. 10:16:58 That gets them thinking about how they're gonna write those stories So there's this whole process involved that's very subjective, and it impacts kind of the final product of those stories. 10:17:08 So it's important to think about there's like 2 things going on. 10:17:11 There's the process of creating the story and then also the end product on the other end of it. 10:17:20 And then stories are unfinished they're complex and they're subjective. 10:17:26 So what I mean by that is that our stories are changing all the time. So there's no such thing as a single story or fixed story. 10:17:36 I think the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves change a lot. 10:17:39 So if we think about who we're talking to and what our audiences are, we might decide to. 10:17:43 You know, include different things or exclude different things over time whether we're 12 or 22 or 42. 10:17:51 We may tell different stories about who we are so we are constantly sort of revising, refining, and revising our own stories. 10:18:00 And so they're in that way they're just they're always subjective. 10:18:02 There's no one sort of single truth and one of the important points with this is that you know when we're working when we think about working with people in our community to ask them to share a story. 10:18:14 So say you work with a family and you do a video and it's on your website. 10:18:20 It's important to remember that you know a year 2 years 3 years down the line. 10:18:28 That family might have a really different relationship to the story that they initially told you. 10:18:32 Their circumstances may have changed their perspective on what happened might have changed their perspective on your organization might be really different. 10:18:39 So it's just important to remember that again you know our stories are always changing, and it's always a really great practice that if we're thinking about using client stories that we're checking back with folks So that you know on the Internet things 10:18:52 can stay up forever indefinitely. So, you know, go through. 10:18:57 I would encourage you to go through your websites and look and see. 10:19:01 You know, this is this video like 4 years old? Maybe we should get back in touch with these folks. 10:19:06 Then just sort of check-in and see if this story still resonates with their experience. 10:19:09 So It's also another great opportunity to just to check in with folks and to sort of build and maintain relationships with the people that are serving 10:19:22 So it's hard for me to talk about storytelling without talking about framing and so I think most people are familiar with the term frame, or at least have heard it, and framing really is the process that determines 10:19:37 what to include and what to exclude in your story, through the use of a variety of devices so framing devices can be a variety of things. 10:19:46 It can be the visuals that you choose so say you're shooting a video. 10:19:52 You know the different visuals you choose to illustrate your story and the way that you use numbers to strengthen your message. 10:19:59 The tone of your story. So If it's a video what kind of music did you select? 10:20:03 Who are your messengers like? Who did you decide? 10:20:07 This is the person we want to invite to tell this story. 10:20:10 So all of those things are choices that we choose as storytellers, and all of those choices provide context and contest essentially is what really helps your audience understand the problem. 10:20:26 So we can think about framing as a camera lens. 10:20:29 Essentially. And so, if we zoom lay in, we can think about this personal mode of storytelling, really highlighting an individual person or a client. 10:20:37 We can zoom out a little bit and think about more of a communal mode of storytelling. 10:20:42 What's the collective like What is the community up to Where does the person fit within that community, or you can zoom way out and think about the structural or political context of the story? 10:20:55 I don't know if you all have seen that documentary thirteenth, but that's a great example of sort of the really wide angle political storytelling where I don't think there's really any personal 10:21:06 narrative at all but it's really about the system it's a story about systems and structures, and all of those different types of storytelling have different kinds of impact. 10:21:18 So here's just an example of how this might look visually. So here we have personal, you know, the personal sort of tight zoom-in frame. 10:21:30 Mode of storytelling we sort of zoom out a bit, and you see this person in the context of a small community of people. it's like they're at a coffee shop. 10:21:42 Well, lots of people are on their phones. This is a very familiar site, I think these days. 10:21:46 If we zoom out even further, we see them in the context of this much larger city. 10:21:55 Some more of the political context. So all those kinds of choices matter I don't know if you're all familiar. 10:22:08 But George Lakeoff is a good reference if you're interested in this idea of framing. 10:22:14 He wrote a really accessible book that you know is critiqued in some ways in terms of it's very much written for a very progressive audience. 10:22:21 So it's pretty hard and could be the conservative viewpoint. 10:22:26 But he has you could Google him and there are all sorts of resources on online videos and stuff that he's done 10:22:35 But he defines framing as sort of mental structures or mental modes that shift the way that we see the world. 10:22:40 So we set goals and define success based on these mental models in our frames. 10:22:45 Really sort of. They evoke ideas, they evoke metaphors, and they activate more ideas or values and beliefs. And the way that framing works is that a great gain, strength, and power through repetition. 10:23:00 So the more we use those frames, the more their sort of solidified in our minds, and the more power they receive. 10:23:07 And they really reflect sort of a fundamental worldview that we have, you know. 10:23:13 Try and just turn my computer a little so I'm not so in the I should go feel like this light is right in my face. 10:23:25 A little better. Okay, So there's 2 here's 2 examples of how framing can work with the example of taxation. 10:23:39 So this comes from lakeoff's book so one way of thinking about taxation is, he writes, that taxation is an affliction, and the person who takes it away is the hero, and anyone who tries to stop him is the bad 10:23:51 guy And so the answer, The frame is sort of tax relief. 10:23:55 So we need relief from this affliction and I think we've all heard that quite a bit on both sorts of conservative and local or progressive sides is this frame of tax relief that's something 10:24:09 that's been repeated over and over again, another way of thinking about taxation is it's paying your dues or your membership fees. 10:24:20 So If you join the club or community center, you pay fees. Y: You did not build the swing pool. 10:24:28 You have to maintain it otherwise. it won't be maintained and it will fall apart. 10:24:33 People who have taxes like corporations that move to Bermuda are not paying their dues to their country. 10:24:39 It's patriotic to be a taxpayer it's traitorous to desert our country and not pay for our views. 10:24:43 So that's another way. of thinking about taxing taxation that it's patriotic that we must pay our fair share. 10:24:51 And I think that's another thing that people have been saying more often is, you know taxing is about paying our fair share. 10:24:58 So you can see there are you know really different ways that we can think about issues in our society, and different ways to frame them, you know, actually skip over this one. 10:25:11 So what would you say? really I can't really see folks for the chat? 10:25:21 So that there's a really dominant frame that's activated in most American storytelling so like a dominant frame meaning of value. or belief. 10:25:33 Does anyone have any thoughts? If you could put it in the chat, although I can't really see the chat at the moment? 10:25:39 I can read them to you, Elaine. Great. 10:25:44 So does anybody have ideas of a dominant frame of value or belief that's activated most often in American storytelling? 10:25:57 I can see the chat now 10:26:00 So, Sara saying, individualism 10:26:08 Other folks have ideas. 10:26:15 Exceptionalism that's a great one 10:26:26 So. there's this really great organization called the frameworks Institute, which has helped me really think about different ways of telling stories. 10:26:38 And in the research that they've done with 500,000 participants, they really found that individualism is the most pervasive and stubborn cultural model that Americans hold. 10:26:51 So it kind of goes across all the different spectrums of social issues. 10:26:54 So individualism still is a very, very dominant frame in our American storytelling, and we see it in all sorts of ways. 10:27:06 So. there's a great book called cultural your responsive teaching in the brain. 10:27:12 And the author of that book really says that there are these different modes of kind of organizing or cultural ways of thinking about our world and individualism. 10:27:30 Being one of them, and she's saying that 20% of the world, mostly European cultures, have this individual cultural world view, and some of the characteristics that she points out are things like which i'm sure this sounds 10:27:43 is familiar to all of you focusing on independence and individual achievement, emphasis on self-reliance, and the belief that one is supposed to take care of themselves to get ahead. 10:27:54 So that idea of sort of the Bootstrap idea, which has been very prevalent in our culture here in the United States. 10:28:03 That learning happens through individual study and reading, that individual contributions and status are really important. 10:28:11 Competent, more of a competitive, technical, analytical culture. 10:28:16 So those are some of the common attributes of his individualism 10:28:25 So how does this sort of translate in nonprofit storytelling, or in, and also legislative storytelling? 10:28:33 If you're in the public sector is these sort of more success or sort of portrait style. 10:28:40 So So the success stories of individual people that we're serving, and some of the like typical story elements of these success stories. 10:28:52 It's sort of made a little grid of different at the different element story elements. 10:28:59 So when you think about the characters of those stories who the stories about it's usually an individual who's experiencing many challenges. 10:29:08 Another character is often the organization, or its donor they're often presented as sort of the hero of the story, or often as the expert in the problem. 10:29:19 Also, I think, is often. how they've presented the conflict and how the problems explained it most often focuses on a personal conflict. 10:29:30 So maybe there's addiction or domestic violence then and it doesn't focus as much on external conflicts. 10:29:39 There might be, you know, some a little bit of context around, you know, for talking about like houselessness. 10:29:47 There might be some statistics thrown in there. 10:29:48 You know the percentage of people and how many people are in town but they don't oftentimes those types of stories don't go deep into the larger problem. 10:30:00 The systemic problem with the issue. The resolution of how the solutions are presented usually emphasizes the organization or the program as the solution. 10:30:13 How the work is done is often pretty simplified or it's left out. 10:30:18 And as far as thinking about like assets like how we're talking about a community's assets in those stories. 10:30:27 They're often very limited they're limited to just the organization, just the donor, or the individual self-determination. 10:30:34 So there's very we don't very often see like more assets in our community more ways that people are coming together to uplift. 10:30:45 The settings are usually pretty narrow in those stories they're the organization. 10:30:50 Maybe the interviews are in people's offices we might see just small slices of the 10:30:55 The individual's home or community it's a pretty narrow frame and the theme is usually you know. 10:31:03 Of course, we want people to be self-sufficient, and we want people to like get on their feet. 10:31:07 And you know some point that also kind of emphasizes the individualistic frame. 10:31:14 So the themes of those stories often celebrate independence and self-sufficiency and the point of view is told from the client most likely. 10:31:23 And then again, the organizational voice is usually presented as the expert in the problem 10:31:33 So there's lots of trainings where you can learn this formula. 10:31:37 This is one from a training I took about 5 or 6 years ago, and I've used you know I've used this in early on, and a lot of my storytelling work I mean this is the typical story structure of 10:31:50 nonprofit storytelling and it's very explicit. 10:31:53 It says you know that that you introduce. your organization and the donor is the hero of the story, and the character's life has changed as a result of the organization. 10:32:02 And I don't wanna say that that isn't also true like that people do overcome really challenging things, and our organizations are amazing, and they do amazing work. 10:32:11 But I think there is, I think, we just need to think about like how we're structuring that story. 10:32:16 Those things can be true, and we can also widen the frame to be. 10:32:21 Think more collectively about how these solutions really happen in the context of the community. 10:32:30 So some of the impacts of this sort of really tight sort of portrait storytelling. 10:32:37 What Is it like? I said. It reinforces this frame of individualism. 10:32:42 It evokes emotions like pity, fear, sympathy, guilt, and those kinds of emotions often lead to fatigue in the end, or disengagement over time, which is really the opposite. 10:32:53 Of what we want. they can often result in just a singular transaction like, for example, if you're showing a video at a fundraising event. 10:33:03 You might get a one-time gift, or just you know a grant that one time over, maybe more deep analysis and transactional change. 10:33:13 And it. These stories often are sort of individualized issues that are really really systemic at their core. 10:33:23 So frameworks tells us that if we rely on these default understandings of narrative, we'll end up telling stories of individuals who succeed or fail based on their choices and efforts and if we want better stories for social 10:33:38 change. We need to retool the architecture of storytelling to get more of the social into the story. 10:33:46 So again less of that sort of personal storytelling, moving out more to the communal, or even further out to the political. 10:33:55 So One way to do this, like, I said, is to widen the frame to collectivism. 10:34:00 We need. We want to emphasize relationships, interdependence, and cooperative learning 3 things to really focus on and like. 10:34:13 We we talked about individualism being sort of 20% of the population. 10:34:19 80% of the world. Latin America, Asia, Africa, Middle East. 10:34:24 Many Slavic countries or cultures practice this sort of collectivist culture. 10:34:29 And some of the attributes that Hammond defines for collectivism are really focusing on interdependence. 10:34:40 Group success, collective wisdom, or resources of the group believe that group members take care of each other to get ahead. 10:34:49 Learning happens through group interaction and dialogue, Group dynamics and harmony are important. 10:34:56 And we need to collaborate it's rather collaborative and very relational. 10:35:02 So relationship based are some of the primary attributes, and none of these things are I mean they're not supposed to be presented as necessarily dichotomous. 10:35:13 I mean, I think, that a lot of cultures can be both and they There's actually like a there's another figure in the book where they show like the extent to which different cultures are individualistic or collectivist but 10:35:28 I think the idea is that they're kind of on a spectrum, and you can. 10:35:32 You can be both so. it's not doesn't have to be like a dichotomy, or either one or the other. 10:35:37 But it's just important to kind of think about the results of each of those types of world views. 10:35:46 So for this more landscape or stories of collective impact. we're really sharing a collective vision. 10:35:54 We're showing cooperation we're showing the assets of a community. 10:35:59 And the many assets it takes to make a social change we're sort of getting under the hood of a social issue to show how just particular systems are structures produce the conditions that need to be changed, and we're explaining how ordinary 10:36:13 people can do extraordinary things when we're working together 10:36:21 So these are some of the questions that we can think about, and sort of the framework for thinking about how to write these kinds of stories. 10:36:32 So we can start with a problem. You know, the structure of the story can really start with a problem. 10:36:38 What is the serious challenge that needs to be addressed so we can move into the context of that problem? 10:36:44 So what's the size and the scope of the problem what's its background? 10:36:49 So we're not necessarily starting with an individual which is you know the typical sort of success story often starts with the individual story. So here we're talking about the problem in the context. 10:36:59 First, we're thinking about the solution, so what assets are available to solve the problem? 10:37:05 And how can progress be made using all of those different assets? 10:37:09 And then we introduced the collective What group of people came together to solve this problem? 10:37:16 And so, for you know, personal storytelling, you can really, you can really work with clients to think about. 10:37:23 You know all the people involved in their lives beyond the organization. 10:37:28 Family members, community members, other people that they've relied on that can, you know, as part of their community, so who are our collective, And we think about how we overcome something. 10:37:43 The process. So thinking about what work was done, using what assets, and what did everybody do to contribute? 10:37:50 So again broadening that frame. So it's less about like you know pulling oneself up by their bootstrap straps with their own personal assets. 10:37:58 But thinking about the assets of the community and the people around them. 10:38:03 Who is the leader? So who brought people together? so you know that's an important part of a story, for sure, and I think we often over-emphasize one individual or leader. 10:38:18 There are often people who like are able to gather people together around a cause, and sometimes that's more than one person. 10:38:24 So something starts co-leaders to things but they don't need to be overemphasized. 10:38:31 I think they're you know over the collective of the group. 10:38:37 What the group did together? We can think about the lessons learned. 10:38:40 So, what obstacles were overcome, and what trials and errors were encountered? 10:38:47 And then thinking about the climax of the story, what changes were achieved? 10:38:52 And then where did things stand now? what's better than it was, and in the end sort of what to be learned from this story. 10:39:01 So there's a lot more in these kinds of stories there's they're longer, typically, and I think that's part of the challenge is that our storytelling modes right now really require very short stories. I mean right? 10:39:14 Now, I think videos any longer than 2 min aren't being watched. So I mean it's really hard to really present the complexity of what's going on in such a short time. period. 10:39:28 So I think that's really the challenge is that these kinds of stories require people to spend a little bit more time reading or listening or watching. 10:39:41 So. some of the impacts of these types of stories is they really have a tendency to amplify the assets or the cultural wealth of an individual in their communities, and that your assets can be a lot of different things they can 10:39:56 be places. So things like land, building transportation, all the physical things, and the place-based things in your community can all serve as an asset to people. 10:40:08 We often think of assets as economic and clearly that's definitely a part of it, and it's not just what people producing consume, but all the ways we informally all the informal economic models like 10:40:23 bartering and trading. Mutual aid has been a huge thing recently, or like the buy nothing groups, I mean. 10:40:31 All of those things are, I think, I think of those as sort of economic assets, even though there's not necessarily money that's exchanged. 10:40:39 Our assets are all our organizations and institutions whether they're volunteer, run, or have paid staff. as an oral historian. 10:40:49 I really feel like our stories are one of our greatest assets in terms of like. 10:40:53 If we think about all the wisdom that we came through living through different times, and how that's the knowledge that we pass down from generation to generation. 10:41:05 So thinking about what stories exist within our community, what kind of cultural knowledge lived? 10:41:12 Experience. can be useful to us now. So I think stories are definitely an asset. And then, of course, all the people in our communities all their skills, all their experiences, thinking again about the collective like what we all bring we think about like 10:41:31 social justice. it's almost like an ecosystem. We all have different skills in different gifts that we can bring and they all work together to create change in our community and other impacts. 10:41:47 Is that in this wider frame storytelling is that it educates the community about the context of the problem? 10:41:54 So. we just have a lot more information about what's going on. and I think one of the things that you can do really thinks about the systems almost as characters in your story that need fixing so If 10:42:04 that's a helpful way of thinking about it so you can introduce those alongside individuals. 10:42:11 As a character in your story, it really invites your donors to be a part of it to be part of a shared sense of purpose. 10:42:22 And how so? there's really much more potential for long-term engagement in terms of funding or volunteerism because these stories are really rooted in us instead of the other so the collective. 10:42:35 We So just showing that interdependence like you know, your liberation is bound up in mind. 10:42:40 Kind of frame of thinking about social change we all we're all kind of in it together, and we all benefit from getting to the other side of these inequities 10:42:55 So again, the context we provide defines whether an issue is public or part. 10:43:03 So we have the portrait storytelling which really defines the issue more in the personal private realm, and we have the landscape stories that really define them as a public or a collective concern so the other result is that 10:43:18 we're more likely to hold institutions or systems accountable for solving problems when we and taking collective action. 10:43:25 So we're often you know as much as we wanna with the success stories we show. 10:43:32 You know that? that this person is overcome? some challenges on the up flip side of that. 10:43:37 We can also blame them later on if things don't go as we hope. 10:43:43 And so I think that's the flip side of that so I think if we can move away from that, then you know, we're really asking our institutions in our systems to solve these problems and to be held accountable and that and you know on 10:43:55 the other side of that is Just that we're all responsible for being a part of that change, making together and making that happen 10:44:05 Alright. so I'm gonna stop sharing for a minute. 10:44:09 Well, I think I'll introduce this activity for a minute and then we'll come. 10:44:13 I'll come back and stop sharing my screen so I can see all 10:44:17 So what I was hoping we could do in this breakout room. 10:44:19 If you all wanna stick around I do have 2 stories one is it's the same event. 10:44:28 One is from the perspective of this sort of portrait, storytelling, and another one is a landscape story. 10:44:35 And so in breakout rooms. What I was suggesting that we do is you have a note taker and a person who might want to read the story aloud. 10:44:41 You're welcome to read it to yourself if you prefer but sometimes it's fun to read aloud read both of the stories, and then consider. 10:44:50 Compare how each unfolds. Consider what you noticed about the 2 approaches to the same story. 10:44:56 What you learned about the problem from each story, and what impact did it have on your engagement or your understanding of how change happens in the community? 10:45:07 And then, if you have time, I thought we could spend about 30 min and breakout rooms. 10:45:12 You might want to discuss how you would use landscape or collectivist story elements to widen the lens. so you could brainstorm some ideas in relation to a success story that your organization may want to tell so think about some 10:45:26 of those elements, and then we'd come back together in the main group and kind of reflect on what we talked about in our small group setting, and what I can do is share both the activity this written out for you as well as the story stories 10:45:40 in the chat, so you can have those available for you so I'm gonna stop sharing now. 10:45:46 So I can see everybody. Thank you so much, Elaine. 10:45:52 I am going to stop recording. So for those of you that are watching the recording later on thank you and we will see you next time!