3 Lessons In Story from BIF Summit Storytellers
Why a good story really can change the world
As BIF’s 11th annual Summit quickly approaches, I find myself typing and saying one of my favorite BIF mantras a lot more often:
A good story can change the world.
I’ve repeated these words so many times because I believe them — stories have changed my world for the better. Among my greatest heroes are real and imagined story characters, from books, films, and family lore. There are lines from stories that I carry in my head, like talismans to ward off boredom and salves for ordinary sadness.
Stories have entertained, soothed, and inspired me. They’ve given me context to learn and grow from, and they’ve lent me the courage to take risks. And as I’ve delved into learning more about the Summit and its storytellers, I’ve realized that these very reasons that stories are dear to me are the reasons that stories can change the world.
A good story can change the world, because it changes us.
Stories drive transformation because they make art and light from human experience. They turn challenge into opportunity, loneliness into humanity, and discontent into productive action. They are also deeply personal, which is precisely why they can drive profound change.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Let three of last year’s storytellers explain:
1. Story paves a way through complexity.
What’s the difference between a lost cause and a source of hope? Future of Fish Founder Cheryl Dahl’s story reveals that the way we confront personal and professional challenges is shaped by the way we narrate them — to ourselves and to others.
The challenges confronting our social systems are unfathomably complex and pressingly great. Story helps us to see complexity through the lens of possibility, and fuels us with the necessary hope to take those challenges head-on.
(P.S. Which we do! Learn more about our Experience Labs’ projects.)
2. Story bridges the “us-and-them” gap to get to “we”.
Angela Blanchard, CEO of Neighborhood Centers, Inc., approaches community development as an opportunity to amplify what’s right in a community, instead of fixing what’s wrong. Her 15 minutes at BIF10 imply that story is essential to that approach: the first step in Houston, Blanchard says, was listening to the stories of community members who were already striving for a better life.
Individual possibility stories can reveal a community’s existing capabilities and its deepest needs, making innovation efforts more purposeful and informed. In the case of Houston, they certainly served this purpose. But an individual’s story also plays an essential role in community development on its own: the act of sharing a story is a foundation for the relationships that catalyze change.
By listening to community members’ stories as a first step to partnership, Blanchard has lived the difference between developing a community from the outside and transforming it from within.
3. Creating space to acknowledge story’s nuance can fuel a movement.
Author, speaker, consultant and entrepreneur John Hagel has a point: there’s a vital distinction to be made between self-contained stories with beginnings and ends, and the continuously unfolding narratives that reveal and shape human history. We have to broaden our concept of storytelling to include these narratives, and make space to create based on their shared meanings.
According to Hagel, big things happen when we do. What happens, for example, when communities see themselves reflected in political narratives, and make space to create — to act —based on what they see?
Political movements. Stories literally make history.
Connect. Inspire. Transform.
Yes, this is another BIF mantra we chorus — one that hangs above our office kitchen and is printed on our business cards. But it also gets to the heart of how good stories change the world: by connecting us to one another, inspiring us to act in the name of possibility, and transforming the way we understand our histories and futures.
BIF Summit storytellers reveal that stories navigate us through the complex, dazzling reality that is 21st century life. They can bring us somewhere new and full of possibility — possibility that expands when we use story as a tool to bridge gaps of meaning, or to create and reveal shared experiences.
Like the phoenixes of our fluid cultural fabrics, stories are also in a perpetual state of rebirth, of unfolding. Our Summit storytellers create and share personal stories, and also inspire attendees to deconstruct those stories and recreate them anew. To act upon them together in wholly new ways.
Want to witness the unfolding of some powerful stories? Feel yourself moved and inspired, and find yourself seeing through a new lens? Witness stories changing the world through collective creation?
Come participate in transformational storytelling.
To find out how you can attend this year’s Summit visit our website at bif.is/summit
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