StoryArcs
Professor Bambo Soyinka has joined forces with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and a team of international Story Experts to pilot StoryArcs, an innovative programme uncovering the deep structures and values of Story Skills.
StoryArcs are working with Story Associates from across the UK, each leading on a different project with a Host Organisation that requires Story Skills to tackle a challenge. The Hosts represent a wide range of UK businesses, charities, creative and non-profit organisations, historical sites and local councils.
Paying close attention to lessons acquired from these placements, the StoryArcs team will produce a prototype ‘Story Skill Set’, to exemplify how different story structures and competencies are used in life, learning and work.
The StoryArcs team will then evaluate the pilot and develop an improved plan for an expanded scheme to support more Story Hosts and Associates. The scaled StoryArcs programme will enable AHRC to embed evidence about Story Skills into a network of training and placement partners.
Story Associates
11 talented Story Associates are embarking on projects across the nation, bringing with them a range of skills and experience in telling, analysing or researching stories.
Their work includes carrying out research into the structures and uses of Story, as well as working on a project with one of our Host Organisations. From historic castles, to experimental futureworlds, to missions to Mars, each project provides a unique setting for their journey to unfold.
We’ll be looking for more Associates with Story expertise later in 2024.
Over the next six months, we’ll be sharing more from the Story Associate’s adventures and research, opportunities to partake in Deep Story Training and information on how you could become a Story Associate in our expanded programme. Be sure to subscribe to our Newsletter to stay up to date.
Meet the Story Associates
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Deep Story Concept
Stories are a powerful way of navigating the world. People use stories to communicate, to drive change, to inspire and to justify. But what are the deep structures and spaces that give stories their shape and significance?
What underlying formations generate the familiar patterns of stories?
How do stories arise from the murky remits of the individual and collective subconscious?
What discoveries and experiments have, over the centuries, made sense of the fundamental elements that stories emerge from?
As we move into the AI era, are story patterns and forms covertly influencing our ideas, decisions and interactions?
The longer-term goal of StoryArcs is to help more people to discover, observe and apply the underlying patterns of story. To facilitate this, we are gathering, shaping and sharing knowledge about common but hidden story forms and skills. This is Deep Story Work: the surfacing of story patterns that influence everyday thoughts, behaviours and perceptions.
We invite anyone interested in this theme (prospective applicants or those who are just curious) to sign up to our mailing list and follow StoryArcs as we probe beneath the surface that stories bubble up through…
