Storytelling and the art of hosting conversations that matter

This is a call to all of you out there who are interested in storytelling, narrative practice and other related forms that add depth, richness and sensemaking to our work as hosts.

This year I'm putting out my intention to really step forward into this work and to call others to contribute to this field of practice. I'd like to hear whether others would like to join me in a series of calls and perhaps meetings where we can focus on the combined power of storytelling, conversation and art as an enhancement to the Art of Hosting practice.

Please share your stories -- as well as your thoughts and ideas -- so we can grow this field!

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Permalink Reply by Ekaterina Khaletskaya on February 23, 2012 at 8:17am

Dear Mary-Alice and everybody,

Although I am just a beginner on the storytelling and narrative practice, I would love to take part in the calls and contribute to this growing field. Curious where it takes us!

Katya

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Permalink Reply by Chris Corrigan on September 18, 2012 at 8:36pm

Spent the afternoon today in a collective story harvest process with 25 indigenous nation builders. Four stories harvested through five arcs. Last week we did the same with 35 people involved in creating community conversations about immigrant and refugee issues in the USA.

In both of these Art of Hosting gatherings we used a World Cafe to ask the question "what do we need to learn to accelerate our work?" The harvest from the cafe were questions which were worked over by a group to create story arcs that we could take to the story harvest process. Was wonderful to tie the concrete harvest of a Cafe into a learning journey through the story arcs. Highly recommended as a design.

Also today a couple of us were thinking about using CSH as a methodology for working with keynotes in a conference. Imagine sitting at eight person conference tables, with everyone receiving a story arc to harvest. They listen to the keynote, go meet the others who carried the same arcs and then report out their findings to crowd, or just tweet them on a hashtag or something. Would make the worst part of conferences waaaay better.