This is how we repair the world…
‘This is how we repair the world. It is not facts and formulas, but the simple refining and telling of our stories that will spark a rethinking in the minds of others- for the hunger in this Information Age is not for more information, but for the fire and light of stories that reveal us to ourselves’
Jan Phillips, The Art of Original Thinking
Why stories, and in particular traditional stories as helpers in the process of change?
It seems on new evidence that fairy tales are ancient. It is thought that many familiar tales go back more than five thousand years. These tales that have persisted through generation after generation have done so I believe because they describe something essential about being human. I think of them as the stem-cells of our culture, the bare bones, the essentials. They enable us to re-calibrate and re-align to something more enduring, wiser and deeper than the ephemeral concerns of present day fads and fashions.
‘The great stories, which appear all over the world in different variations, are intuitions sensed about this mysterious nature of absolute reality. Great stories have lightness and multi-dimensional agility. They speak constantly to different levels in us. They speak to us at the level we are on.’
Ben Okri The Mystery Feast: thoughts on storytelling
Feedback from my workshops:
Individual change
Change at work
Environmental and Social Change