Storytelling As a System for Social Change

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  To understand how stories are collected and used to affect System, Environment and Policy change in order to empower communities, change policy and build capacity to mobilize to action. The overarching aims of this process are threefold: 1) to identify effectiveness in storytelling as a system for moving policy forward, 2) identify domains of storytelling that empower communities and build capacity to mobilize to action and 3) identifying core capacities that will be integrated into a framework /toolkit.

Methods:  Empirical and existing data have been collected from a comprehensive literature review, key informant interviews, focus groups and observation in order to identify the domains of storytelling as a system and tool for change. Our team identified four domains that were developed and analyzed through this mixed method approach.

Results: The four domains include: 1) Knowledge (what knowledge is necessary to use story), 2) Skill (How to employ knowledge effectively), 3) Belief (What needs to be believed in order to use story as a system) and 4) Comfort (the level of readiness of a person or community to use story).

Conclusions:  The comprehensive efforts of this work will shift societal thinking to reframe the importance of storytelling as an effective system to do prevention work. This system should move a community/coalition to an increased level of readiness that leads to adaptive change. This process includes identifying a community/coalition’s level of readiness, tailoring technical assistance to that community/coalition and identifying at what point a community is able to sustain their own efforts.

Implications for research and/or practice:  1. Understand the power of storytelling as a system for community and policy change, including the four domains of storytelling 2. Identify untold stories that have the potential to drive community change 3. Identify how the storytelling process builds community capacity within each of the four domains 4. Understand the process of how stories are collected, used and by whom