The art of storytelling - or “storytelling” as it is called in English - is used all over the world as a powerful method in many fields from education to politics, advertising to art. We thought about how organizations can use this method in civil society to convey their voice in a more emotional and effective way and how this method can contribute to the growth of solidarity in civil society. With this in mind, we came together and started a series of storytelling workshops and stage performances that we call “Power Stories”.
In the storytelling workshops, participants learned how to better tell their own stories, the stories of their organizations, and struggles for rights to others. In this process, which lasted for about a year, we not only taught how to tell stories, but also experienced how to be transformed by the power of these stories.
The first step of this process was to make a call and bring together storytellers from civil society organizations working in different fields of rights. Eighteen storytellers from civil society actors who met the criteria we set participated in storytelling workshops. At the end of the workshops, where they learned how to tell stories arising from different areas of rights more powerfully and effectively with the techniques of oral narrative art, the narrators brought their own stories to the audience on stage.
We listened to 18 stories from 6 different provinces under the title of Power Stories. One narrator's comment summarizes the impact of Power Stories:
"After the event, there were listeners who said that what I said inspired them. One of my Iranian immigrant friends said that she wanted to tell her story about the women's movement in Iran, which was the most important gift for me."
We have also prepared a video documenting this process. For those who are curious, we explain the workshop journey of our narrators from different NGOs, the changes and gains experienced during this process and most importantly how solidarity strengthened. Because this was not just a story of telling our stories; it was a story of strengthening together, of touching each other.
Stories can really create change. And maybe changing the world starts with a story.