DAY 97: Stories for Change workshop
By Douwe van der Werf, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 28 October 2017
During the workshop at Dutch Design Week, participants were encouraged to see themselves as the hero in their own story.
Although such an exercise might feel a bit uncomfortable at first (especially in a room full of people you just met!), it’s great to see people quickly opening up and finding the courage to enthusiastically share the journeys they’d like to see themselves take in their own project, career or life.
In the ‘Stories for Change’ workshop, participants learned about developing their personal story of change, based on the timeless work of Joseph Campbell, writer of the book ‘Hero of a Thousand Faces’.
You are a Hero too
We’re all going somewhere. We all want to achieve something, no matter how huge or small. Some of us try to get away from a certain situation, “The Broken World”, while others, at least to some degree, know where they want to go, “The Vision”.
We all face obstacles on our journey, “The Monster” —or several ones— and to overcome these obstacles we all need some outside assistance from a “Mentor” and his/her “Gift” in some way, shape or form.
The Hero, the Mentor, the Gift, The Broken World, the Vision and the Monster are not just good ingredients for stories of epic entertainment, they could be the essential elements of your story too.
Realising and accepting that you are the Hero of your own unique life story and identifying the core elements of the that story can be a great way to find out what mission you are REALLY on.
About me
My name is Douwe van der Werf and as a filmmaker, through my company Mister Lee, I’ve directed and produced —mostly animated– films about human and environmental themes, always stories of positive change.
Recently, I’ve set up ‘a Bigger story’ foundation, which brings creative people together to build a shared narrative, made up of many, many different voices, flavours and influences.
The stories you believe in shape your reality
Stories are not just the sequences of events that fictional characters go through in films, theater plays and games. Stories are the way in which you have organised your worldview, a broad and wiggly network of associations you’ve built about all the things you’ve encountered in your life.
The story that you believe about the world and the shape it has, serves as the operating systems to your perception, the lens through which you see the world and create meaning. Better make sure it’s a good story!
The power that stories have over not just our personal lives, but our entire societies, is much greater than we are often aware of, but too often, we take them for granted, unquestioned. Societies of millions of people couldn't be kept together without belief in a shared story.
Because the stories that are most dominant in your family, the culture and society that you grew up in are so familiar and therefore so ‘normal’ (to you!), they can be extremely convincing; we hardly realise that we inherited these stories and that they are essentially fictional.
Only when we do become more aware of the stories that essentially govern our lives and when we question them deeply, could we re-evaluate and possibly even re-write those stories for ourselves.
This can be both a scary and a confronting process, but eventually, also a very liberating and satisfying experience. Being aware of and consciously evaluating and changing the stories we believe, helps us become truly independent, deeply connected people.
The world desperately needs a hero like you, to rise up and take the first steps of their journey … preferrably today.
Remember that scene from The Matrix? Neo wakes up to the truth, and although it makes his life exponentially more difficult, he eventually chooses the truth over his comfort zone.
Only by choosing the difficult path of hardship and chasing the truth, can Neo become ‘The One’, and see through and transcend the Matrix.
The White Rabbit 🐇
Have you spotted your white rabbit yet, that little hint, hunch or clue, that might gently be calling for your attention, to point you in a certain direction, towards story waiting to be discovered? If yes, why not pick up the courage to follow it and see where you might end up?
If you haven’t spotted your white rabbit yet, you can be sure that there’s one out there for you too, so be on the lookout and you just might it!
What values underpin your story?
It’s very tempting to want to change the world out there, but before we do that, perhaps we should first challenge the world inside of us, made up of our beliefs. Have you ever thoroughly identified and questioned the deep values that underpin your beliefs?
Utopia/Dystopia
When we think of the years, decades and centuries ahead for humanity and the world, we often think in stories of glorious utopias or terrifying dystopias.
But eventually, all of our choices and the results they produce, both the conscious as well as the intuitive ones, on both an individual as well as on a collective level, are based on our world view, the image of the world that we hold inside our skull. That image consists of all the different stories we believe in. It can be beautiful or terrifying, it can be close to reality or quite misguided, it can be loving or hateful, trusting or suspicious. There are basically no limits to what it can be, the shape it can have.
But what do we want it to be?
Thank you!
It was both a privilege and a joy to be part of #100daysoearning for Age of Wonderland at Dutch Design Week together with Young Art Crowd.
Thanks to everyone!
Thank you very much, enthusiastic workshoppers!
Some day in the future, you will receive that letter from yourself. This could be sooner or much later than you expect, who knows? 🐇
