How to use storytelling in DEI?

I come from a storytelling background in #dei and to me a story is one of the most powerful tools we can use to bring people together and validate everyone’s experience.

Storytelling in the context of #dei is about:

-        sharing space for different narratives

-        creating a feeling of belonging by sharing the story of who you truly are

-        realizing our story is a story, it’s not the only story that matters

-        transforming the narrative and revealing those stories that have been forgotten, cancelled and alternated to serve the mainstream

Sometime ago, I’ve come acroess Storytelling Project Model of Lee Anne Bell. It offers a framework where stories that reproduce status quo get challenged and transformed.

 The model’s purpose is to create counter-storytelling that will be intentional and that can support communities in the healing process.

 The Model categorizes and describes four types of stories:

 (1) stock stories - are “the tales told by the dominant group, passed on through historical and literary documents, and celebrated through public rituals, law, the arts, education, and media”

 (2) concealed stories - that are just beneath the surface; not so much unknown as constantly overshadowed, pushed back into the margins, and conveniently ‘forgotten’ or repressed.

 (3) resistance stories - “narrate the persistent and ingenious ways people, both ordinary and famous, resist racism and challenge stock stories that support it in order to fight for more equal and inclusive social arrangements,”

 (4) emerging/transforming stories - are “new stories we construct to challenge stock stories, build on and amplify concealed and resistance stories, and take up the mantle of antiracism and social-justice work through generating new stories to catalyze contemporary action against racism” 

 The four story types are “connected and mutually reinforcing and each story type leads into the next in a cycle that fills out and expands our understanding of and ability to creatively challenge the racism”.

 An example of a stock story and how it can be transformed, you will find on a carousel.

 What stories would you like to challenge and transform with this model?

 The two that come to my mind are:

 -        Christopher Columbus discovered America

-        Since the beginning of humanity men were hunters, women took care of the kids 

 Source: Bell, L. A. (2019). Storytelling for Social Justice: Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching. New York, NY: Routledge.