“We all know how powerful stories are. Stories shape our imagination, inspire our actions, and underscore our values. In the socio-economic and cultural world, stories can help us to make sense of complex and interconnected challenges but can also obscure, spin, and distract when used in counter-progressive ways. We know that stories can inspire, entertain, explain and justify. They can aid our memory, help us to share experiences, communicate, and to drive personal and collective change.
We know all of this. But what people are less sure of, and perhaps don’t often question at all, is how do stories do this? What exactly is happening when we deploy Story in these ways?”
– Bambo Soyinka, Professor of Story at Bath Spa University; and AHRC’s Programme Director for StoryArcs.
The Mission
StoryArcs is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Programme run by The Story Society at Bath Spa University. Our mission? To conduct a deep exploration into the nature of Story Skills. We’re seeking to find out what Story Skills are, to define and categorise them, and to examine how they work to enable diverse and innovative benefits.
Our internal team at StoryArcs, led by Professor Bambo Soyinka, is researching the deep structures of Story and the nature of Story Skills. But integral to our mission is a band of highly skilled, intrepid individuals hired as Story Fellows. While our internal team delve into concepts and theories at StoryArcs HQ, the Story Fellows are venturing out to test Story Skills in real world settings. Their role is to undertake placements with Host organisations around the UK, exploring and examining how Story Skills can address organisational challenges.
The discoveries of our Story Fellows will be synthesised with the internal team’s developing concepts and theories to generate rich understanding of Story Skills and their powers. This knowledge will fuel the long-term goal of StoryArcs: to enhance the strategic objectives of AHRC through the production of a series of legacy training resources, including an innovative, industry-facing Story Skill Set. This Skill Set will elucidate a taxonomy of Story Skills, illuminate their unique chemistry, and help researchers in the early stages of their careers to demonstrate their unique Story strengths and capabilities.
Christopher Smith, Executive Chair of AHRC, emphasises the importance of Story Skills in life, learning and work:
“Stories are the lifeblood of our communities and our identities. We all tell stories, and we all need stories, but sometimes we need stories to make a difference. StoryArcs is part of AHRC’s commitment to illustrating how Story is core to so much of what we do, in education, innovation and society – and to helping us all tell and listen to stories in the best ways possible.”
The Call
The StoryArcs Pilot Programme launched in 2023. Our idea for a Story Skill Set quickly catalysed the thinking of organisations across the UK, who saw the potential of this unique mission. We partnered with eleven Host organisations (representing a wide range of UK businesses, charities, creative non-profit organisations, historical sites, and local councils), each presenting a challenge to be solved by eleven daring Story Fellows with the help of Story Skills. The challenges include a diverse series of workplace opportunities – from untangling how we can tell stories of research without twisting the narrative, to collecting stories of our era that can journey into space. They encompass themes such as rural isolation, fake news, experimental future worlds, and barriers to inclusion. Through these projects we are gaining a better understanding of the potential value of Story to contribute to the broader mission of AHRC; to make a difference to society and the economy through interdisciplinary responses to national priorities.
We searched far and wide during our call for the StoryArcs Pilot Programme, running an extensive, national search for multi-talented Early Career Researchers with an interest in Storytelling or Story analysis. We could not have anticipated the volume and quality of the applications that we were to receive, demonstrating a national interest in Story as a core skill and research theme.
An independent panel scrupulously examined the applications. After careful deliberation, eleven Story Fellows were selected for the Pilot run of StoryArcs. Each successful applicant demonstrated how they would use their unique Story Skills to solve the real-world problem set by their preferred Host organisation.
We are excited to see how our Story Fellows’ projects develop over the course of the Pilot Programme. We know that our concepts and understandings of Story will be enriched and complicated by the questions raised and insights gained through their placements.
Dr Allan Sudlow, AHRC Director of Partnerships and Engagement, commented that:
“In every professional setting that I have worked in throughout my career, I have seen story skills at play. People using stories to share knowledge and insight, influence and direct, inspire and challenge how individuals, teams and organisations act in the real world. This Programme gets to the heart of defining and sharing what that skill set is and making that knowledge available for others to learn and deploy in their own careers.”
For further information about The Search for Associate Story Fellows in the Pilot Programme, download our Data Insights Sheet, the first of a series of short reports contributing to the developmental evaluation and improvement of the Programme.
The Inaugural Story Fellows
So, who are the eleven individuals that assembled for this adventure? Below you’ll find a snapshot of our Story Fellows and their compelling projects.
John Strachan, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, marked the start of their adventures with these warm words;
“We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Story Fellows to the Story Society and to Bath Spa University. It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of Story in our cultures, regionally, nationally and globally, and the Story Society, in association with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is engaged in very important research and creative fieldwork in its collaborations with communities, companies and creatives. Our Story Associates play a central and very significant role in that work.”
Each Story Fellow worked with one of ten mentors from our University Gateway Partners, sharing expertise and knowledge from a wealth of different fields. Professor Shreepali Patel from University of the Arts London mentored two of the Story Fellows, Ben Teasdale and Anna Ploszajski. Shreepali had this to say about how our mission at StoryArcs connects with UAL’s work and ambitions:
“StoryArcs’ mission to develop a Story Skill Set is a very necessary and innovative study into the complex application and impact of storytelling in society. StoryArcs aligns completely with UAL’s aim to change the world through ‘creative endeavour’, by demonstrating the value of creativity to society and to use creative strengths to tackle societal changes.”
As our mission progressed, the Story Fellows shared their revelations and narratives from the field with us and you. The discoveries made within this Pilot Programme will be the start of something much bigger. Professor Soyinka and the StoryArcs team worked in the background to synthesise these findings, resulting in the production of a series of dialogues about emerging Deep Story Skills and what could come next.
We see StoryArcs as a long-term commitment and responsibility to encourage change for social good by enhancing understandings of Story and Story Skills. Our success will see a wider recognition and more nuanced understanding of the power of Story to progress organisational and societal ambitions. We are very proud of what the Pilot Fellows discovered, and are excited by the work our new Fellows are completing. More than that, we look forward to sharing this all with you, and seeing what may come as we continue this work into the future.
To stay up to date with the Pilot Programme, projects, and opportunities to get involved in the Full Programme, sign up to the StoryArcs Newsletter.
Davina Quinlivan
Story Fellow working with Suki Tea and mentored by Professor John Wedgwood Clarke at University of Exeter.
Dr Davina Quinlivan is a research associate in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Shalimar: A Story of Place and Migration (Little Toller Press, 2022). For several years, she has run a series of creative writing and film seminars at The Freud Museum, and she was the ‘headline’ author of the 2023 Summer issue of Hinterland: Creative Non-Fiction Magazine. Recently, Davina held a writing residency with Literature Works/Quay Words (Spring 2023). For twelve years, Davina was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Critical and Historical Studies, Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. She holds a PhD in Film from King’s College London. Her other publications include The Place of Breath in Cinema (EUP: 2012) and Filming the Body in Crisis (Palgrave: 2015).
Davina drew on histories of environmental writing, migration and eco-poetics to tell the story of Suki Tea. This approach was based on her own personal heritage and connections with Ireland, as well as her interests in ancient, mythological, and non-Western forms of knowledge, visual culture and the pictorial imaging of tea-drinking and its practices across the globe. Key to this research were be the medical humanities archives at The Wellcome Trust, The National Maritime Museum and the development of a new creative non-fiction publication on health, material cultures and objects.
Davina shared her personal connection with the project:
“My family were storytellers whose experiences during WW2 were too difficult to talk about; instead, they created new stories from fragments of their Indigenous and Colonial heritage and its subsequent mythology. They held on to the parts of the narrative where they were at the centre and not marginalised, exiled. Tea is one of those things I heard stories about. I’ve written about lahpet, Burmese tea, and the ways in which it connects to my own understanding of culture, community, place and heritage.
One of the outcomes of this project will be the curation of ‘Tea Stories’, a new platform for discussions around migration, creativity and storytelling.”
Anna Ploszajski
Story Fellow working with UKRN and mentored by Professor Shreepali Patel at University of the Arts London.
Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist and storyteller based in London. Her creative practice centres around engaging traditionally underserved audiences with science and engineering on the screen, stage and page. She runs training courses teaching storytelling and public engagement to STEM researchers. Working with UKRN, Anna explored how to retain the benefits of accessible narrative forms, whilst maintaining standards of rigour within research.
Traditionally, researchers have communicated their results passively and positively, glossing over the true version of events, such as experiments that failed or results that surprised them. These sanitised narratives are not engaging to audiences and can erode trust both within the research community and the wider public. But hero-based story narratives that include conflict, stakes, and character flaws can humanise the researcher as protagonist, and tell the true story of research in an inherently engaging way. Anna’s project with the UKRN aimed to embed good storytelling in UK research culture by engaging with Researchers, Journal Editors, Journalists and Policy Makers to restore trust and integrity in how research is communicated.
Andy Barrett
Story Fellow working with Superflux and mentored by Professor James Moran at University of Nottingham.
Andy Barrett is a Nottingham-based researcher and theatre maker whose work has been commissioned widely for stage and radio. His focus has always been on community-based practice. His company, Excavate, has partnered with thousands of local people to create work exploring ideas of heritage, culture, and identity.
With Superflux, Andy conducted fieldwork across three contested landscapes throughout the UK; carried out interviews; practiced deep-listening; and brought the hopes, fears and mythologies of local communities to the surface. With a focus on the entanglement of humanity and nature, these research activities informed an emergent project around possible futures. Together, Andy and Superflux tease out a shift from anthropocentrism and the paralysis of bewilderment to the potential of collective action engendered by hope and our ecological interdependence.
Jenny Hulme
Story Fellow working with Story Town and mentored by Professor Brian Morgan at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Jenny Hulme is a journalist and author based in Wales. After many years working as a senior editor on women’s magazines in London, she moved into freelance work, combining commissions for national consumer and business magazines with writing projects (including seven books), supporting campaigns to promote health, wellbeing, and inclusion.
Jenny worked with Corsham Town Council to tell the stories of the High Street. Corsham has no intention of being an average town or home to an average High Street. The town council in this beautiful part of the world is working to establish a creative, collaborative and sustainable community. They are already believers in Story, having established a celebration of storytelling called StoryTown, and invited Jenny to work with them to explore how they can now use Story – a whole tapestry of stories in fact – to bring to life (and to the region and wider world) their history, culture, community and local economy in a way to inform town planning to help them flourish.
Angharad Hampshire
Associate Story Fellow working with New Writing North and mentored by Professor Abi Curtis at York St John University.
Dr Angharad Hampshire has worked as a radio producer for the BBC, journalist for the South China Morning Post, Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Hong Kong, and Tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney. She has a Doctor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney.
Angharad worked on New Writing North’s A Writing Chance project, which aimed to open access to the writing industries for sixteen new and aspiring writers from working-class, lower-income and other underrepresented backgrounds. The project also sought to influence industry policy and practice.
For this project, Angharad conducted research into working-class readers to uncover the diverse range of books that working-class readers like to read, to learn about their reading habits and motivations, and to hear their opinions on working-class representation in fiction and in publishing. She also developed a forthcoming podcast for New Writing North about working–class writing.
Angharad highlights the importance of her role:
“Harnessing the talent of working-class and under-represented groups and telling their important stories is not just a matter of social justice, it also makes economic sense because this lack of diverse representation leaves a gap in the market. […] My research project with A Writing Chance aims to explore how the publishing industries can improve access to effect permanent and sustainable change.”
Viccy Adams
Story Fellow working with Winged Chariot and mentored by Dr Jane McKie at The University of Edinburgh.
Viccy Adams has been a writer in residence with the Naxi people in rural Southwest China, created a virtual library of books by women, exhibited writing about sewing machines at the V&A, and burnt a day’s work to fuel a mobile sauna. Find her on socials @ViccyIsWriting or www.viccyadams.com
Following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Anne Druyan and Carl Sagan in their preparation of the golden record for Voyager, Viccy built upon her existing expertise in creative engagement projects for Winged Chariot’s project, Message Space. Viccy gathered a wide variety of messages to send into space, inspiring members of the public to take part, and led workshops exploring the myriad of ways to relay a message. What messages, stories, or tales of Earth today might we want to relay to future generations?
Tom Bullough
Story Fellow working with Hay Castle and mentored by Jude Wall and Ian Watson at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Tom Bullough grew up on a hill farm in Radnorshire, mid-Wales. He is the author of five books – most recently, Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future – and a passionate climate activist. He lives near Brecon with his children and a dog.
Tom’s take on Hay Castle’s challenge was Tarddiad / Source – an audio project. Tom recorded the stories of one hundred and twenty people along the course of the Wye Valley, from the Wales-England border to the Cambrian Mountains, where the river rises. The objective was to interlace these voices into a two-hour installation. This represented multiple communities – their histories, hopes and concerns – but also, centrally, reflected upon the Wye itself: a river which, due to agricultural pollution and the impacts of climate change, has become infamous for its poor condition.
Kayla Jones
Story Fellow working with Local Trust and mentored by Dr Lyle Skains at Bournemouth University.
Dr Kayla Jones is a creative practitioner and researcher in digital storytelling. She has a Masters in Professional Writing and a PhD in Welsh History from Bangor University. Her research explores using media like podcasting and blogging to better tell stories in industries such as heritage, nonprofit, and tourism.
Working with Local Trust, Kayla explored how to communicate Big Local’s activities and impacts. Local Trust’s project spanned ten years, with funding for projects such as building a sports centre and an outdoor cinema, and facilitating social enterprise dinners, young adult programmes, and local financial services.
Josh Weeks
Story Fellow working with NCACE and mentored by Professor Haidy Geismar at University College London.
Dr Josh Weeks is a writer and researcher from Monmouthshire, South Wales. He recently completed a PhD on the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño at the University of Amsterdam, where he was also a 2022 Finishing Fellow. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, TLS, Wellcome Collection, and LA Review of Books.
Josh’s spin on NCACE’s challenge was entitled Growing the Garden of Cultural Knowledge Exchange: A Labyrinthine Approach. The questions driving the project were: What forms of knowledge exchange comprise the labyrinth of NCACE? And how might we conceptualise and narrate those forms of knowledge exchange whilst acknowledging NCACE’s position as a fluid, ever-expanding organisation? The aim of the project, to tell the story of NCACE’s life-enhancing work, articulated the values, aims, and impacts of the organisation, and supported the growth of the NCACE Collection and Evidence Repository.
Helen O’Neill
Story Fellow working with Story Futures and mentored by Professor Helen Nicholson at Royal Holloway.
Helen Scarlett O’Neill is a site-responsive and immersive arts specialist utilising game theory and participatory practice to explore space. Helen most recently produced sixteen mobile augmented reality pieces at locations across the UK for Story Futures Academy in collaboration with the British Film Institute, winning the Museums + Heritage award for Best Use of Digital.
Helen drew on her background as a producer of complex participatory experiences to join Story Futures Academy, investigating what new modes of interactive/collaborative storytelling might be made possible using XR (Extended Reality) technologies in networked public library contexts. She approached this through both creative applications of stable, easy-to-access technologies and rapidly emerging technologies which might shape the near future. She arrived useful approaches and production flows which act as a storytelling kit for a people’s metaverse, enabling mass, multi-perspectival storytelling using leading edge technology.
Ben Teasdale
Story Fellow working with UAL and being mentored by Professor Shreepali Patel at the same institution.
Ben Teasdale’s background combines creative practice with interdisciplinary research. He has worked as a script editor for BBC Drama, as a professional screenwriter, and completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa. After retraining with an MSc in Experimental Psychology, he undertook parallel research roles exploring the cognitive underpinnings of storytelling/reception.
Benworked with the AKO Storytelling Institute at University of the Arts, London. He undertook an evaluation of the inaugural UAL Storytelling Fellowship, a nine-month programme exploring how storytelling can lead to social change. Twelve fellows from varied industries including journalism, visual and sound arts, curation, campaigning, activism, and academia were brought together on the theme of ‘Truth and Lies’ to examine how stories can help counter misinformation and disinformation. The fellows underwent an intensive journey through theory and practice, via bespoke mentoring and workshops, leading to the creation of public-facing artworks combining their talents and new learning.
To stay up to date with the Pilot Programme, projects, and opportunities to get involved in the Full Programme, sign up to the StoryArcs Newsletter.
