Written by:
Sophia de Sousa
Our February Chat, Designing in Stories was co-hosted with Cristina Carrasco, Participation Manager for the Sunday School Stories Project at Union Chapel in Islington. Using the experience of her work to kick-start the conversation, Cristina talked about the project to connect local people with the heritage and stories of Union Chapel through its building, cultural programme and archive. This creative programme is engaging new audiences in both engaging with and producing arts and culture. We were joined by a group of participants from a range of backgrounds, including sociologists, both educators and students, designers, curators and activists. Together, we explored the role of stories and storytelling in connecting people, places, culture and heritage.
Key Themes
One of the areas of shared interest within our group was the power of stories as a connector and as a way to create space for dialogue and exchange. From sharing oral histories to sharing experiences and reflections, stories can serve as a gateway to building relationships. Physical places and spaces can also both contribute to and benefit from storytelling, whether providing that third space for sharing stories or unearthing and revealing stories through their heritage. Often the combination of places, heritage and stories can create new opportunities for breaking down barriers across generations and within communities, and can offer new routes to participating in the arts and culture and social justice movements.
The Power of Stories as a Connector
We all grow up with stories as a means of teaching us cultural norms, understanding our environment and passing down family histories. They help connect us with each other and with the places around us. We talked about the importance not only of the stories themselves, but of the act of sharing stories. Our participants were interested in the dialogue and exchange that stories can unleash, and the role that they can play in bringing people together, making people feel welcome and accepted, and helping them to find common ground or common purpose.
One of our participants spoke of the role of stories in “commoning” or how we work together around a shared resource. Whether that resource is a physical space, such as a village green, community centre or allotment, or some other thing that we share and treasure, such as shared experiences or co-produced knowledge, stories can help extend the reach of that resource from an inner circle to the local community and indeed to the wider society.
Another person told us of her grandmother in France, who had set up a charity to promote and support storytelling with a focus on sharing stories across generations. She spoke of the impact this had had in building relationships and in breaking down barriers in her community.
We also talked about the objects that help us tell stories about our own past and to unearth the stories of others. In the case of a collection, museum or archive, those objects may be removed from their original context and need a story to help us place them and connect them to a place, person, movement or moment in time. By contrast, objects within a place, sometimes the architectural elements within a building, help us tell its story and make it relevant to people today.
What binds all of these concepts is the power of stories to invite people in, bridge divides and forge connections. They can introduce, explain, animate and activate. The act of sharing stories binds us together in a spirit of generosity and reciprocity.
Stories, Place & Physical Spaces
Every place holds a multitude of stories, some deeply personal and others of collective experience. Buildings, spaces and neighbourhoods hold these associations for better or worse. The heritage of any place is not just about its physical attributes or function, but about people’s experience of it, of the memories they associate with it.
Some might call this baggage, as one of our participants pointed out, which can become a kind of barrier when we are thinking of either protecting or repurposing a building or transforming an open space or neighbourhood. However, a place’s stories can also serve to unearth and highlight the “spirit of a place”. This can in turn help inform and inspire what happens there in the future, shape its activities and people’s experience of it.
Another thing that we explored is the importance of creating spaces to share stories. We of course have the tradition of the campfire, which dates back to the first settlements and which still holds an important place in many cultures. How does this translate to our present-day urban environments, and how do we ensure that there are these third spaces, outside our homes or our workplaces, where we can congregate to share stories with each other?
Stories Making Heritage & Culture More Accessible
This led us very naturally to return to considering the role of arts and culture in story telling and vice versa. For millennia, we have used music, poetry, theatre, dance and the graphic arts to share our stories and to extend their reach. Another participant spoke specifically of the role of crafts in bringing people together to share stories, referencing basket weaving traditions and their place in many cultures. The act of making together can create a safe space for people to share stories from their past but also news of what is happening in their lives today.
Stories told through creative alternatives to the traditional written histories within educational environments can provide more accessible routes into history, traditions, even simply information. As one of our participants put it, “Following stories is a way for people to connect with a message.” It makes that message more accessible, palatable, and relevant.
The arts and culture gives space for a diversity of voices to share their stories in a myriad of ways, but in the same way, those stories brought to life through artistic endeavours can create a pathway for a diverse range of people into the arts, culture and heritage.
Using the stories of a place to bring people together, to share or create new stories through the arts, can also have an empowering effect. It can give voice to underrepresented groups, unearth confidence and help people develop new skills. It can also support movements for change and help champion and enable social justice. Stories sit at that connection between sharing, creative endeavours and collective action.
Wrapping Up
In this era of data and quantitative evaluation, stories can be hugely undervalued. They don’t easily produce statistics and may feel too anecdotal for comparative analysis. However, this Chat demonstrated that stories have an important role to play in our society. Stories and the act of sharing stories are inextricably bound with the places we inhabit, and how we interact within them. They are connectors between people, places and culture, across time, generations and borders, and they help both ground us in and help us understand the places around us. Perhaps we should all give them more space in our collaborative design journeys to shape our places.
Spotlight Project from Co-host Cristina Carrasco
Making Trouble | Behind-the-Songs is a concept of original music created and performed by young London musicians, celebrating Union Chapel’s unique role as a place of heritage and social justice, women pioneers, and extraordinary performing artists.
Find out more about this inspiring initiative here.