Building in Public - Our regenerative storytelling workshops have begun
This article’s companion Awakening Lands podcast episode (5 mins):
Ok, so we now have a few regenerative storytelling workshops under our belt…
But wait, you might be asking, what is regenerative storytelling?
Well, regeneration is the process by which something is renewed, is restored. It is cyclical. It is a pattern of living entities and living systems. Regeneration refers to practices that revitalize whole natural systems, promote biodiversity, resilience, the restoration of degraded land, a return to natural abundance, and a return to life. A regenerative story might be about bringing back a dried up creek, a local farm adopting regenerative agricultural practices, it could be about anything that results in healthier soils, more water retained on the land, a greater presence of life.
Regenerative stories also revitalize communities themselves, fostering human cultures that tap into ongoing and cyclical renewal of people and place. A great example is our friends at Regenerating Sonora in Superior, Arizona hosting regular open mic nights at their community center named Leo’s to provide a reliable place for the neighborhood to meet up.
Regenerative stories can also be about individuals. There could be a story of someone who suddenly realizes that the world around them doesn’t seem to be filled with quite as much life as they experienced when they were younger, and they set off on a quest to seek why.
These stories are broad and cover so much, but in essence they are stories that inspire us, that bring clarity to visions and possibilities of better ways of being humans on Earth.
In these workshops, we want to learn how to create a creative space where more people, more storytellers, more artists, are learning together how to tell these stories. A flood of hope and possibility wants to flow freely. Right now, some of the things we’ve seen holding back that torrent of goodness are a lack of highly visible examples and models, a lack of understanding of how to coherently tell stories of regeneration, somehow a lack of permission to do so, and definitely a lack of production capability. These are barriers we are aiming to overcome, these are the lessons we are aiming to learn.
A glimpse into the jam boards we’re developing in our workshops
The majority of each workshop is devoted to what we’ve so far dubbed the “collective creative act.” In this, we’re aiming to learn how to see the many storylines in local regenerative movements that want to be told, but also for a few volunteer storytellers to leave with “artifacts,” or something tangible to refer back to. This often feels like detective or journalistic work. It’s easy fun.
In this early stage, the workshops are leaving volunteer storytellers with a few things:
First is a sort of map on a jam board of their local regenerative movement along with an exploration of the unique voice and perspective the particular storyteller has within it. The intent here is for small groups to organize around the storyteller in support, to be curious, to ask good questions that result in greater understanding. Below, you can see that in one of our recent workshops we explored the movement in Erie Niagara through Anna Purpera’s voice.
Once we have that high level perspective of the movement and the storyteller, we’ve then spent some time coming up with specific story ideas.
Finally, the jam session has ended with us selecting a single story to outline with scene ideas included. The intention is for each storyteller to leave the workshop with something they’re inspired to create along with a detailed plan for how to do it.
We are learning so much already. A couple lessons to share are; don’t overcomplicate things and aim to create shared inspiration before entering the collective creative act. We will bring more lessons to our upcoming “build it in public,” posts and episodes down the road. We’re thinking to organize and open source our lessons into a guidebook too. That idea is just a sprout, so look for more on that to come.
For now, here’s the short video that Anna Purpera created as a result of the jam boards above:
#AwakeningErieNiagara
#AwakeningTheWestElks
Another storyteller friend of ours Elizabeth Yaari created this beautiful reel that was also designed in one of our workshops. She’s doing some incredible work to regenerate land in the high desert of the Western Slope of Colorado. We hope to hear more stories from Elizabeth soon. She offers such a great model for how to heal the land and to me is an embodiment of inspiration.
If you’re already creating regenerative stories and you’d like to help us all to hear the voices of more landscapes, you can add the hashtag #AwakeningLands to your videos. To speak specifically for your place you can use the hashtag #Awakening[YourPlaceName].
Let’s hear our lands awaken!