Podcast Episode 3: Once Upon A Time: Why Is Storytelling Important?

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

00:00:06:22 – 00:00:27:22

Dawn

Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast, where we explore how a creative approach to life story work can help children and young people who’ve been in care make sense of their past and build a brighter future. A new model for life story work is being rolled out in the north east of England, and this podcast shares

 

00:00:27:22 – 00:00:43:10

Dawn

the latest learning and investigates how it could help improve the lives of care, experienced children and young people across the country. My name is Dawn Williams and I am a director at Blue Carbon, one of the partners on this exciting work in the region.

 

00:00:43:21 – 00:01:06:19

Dawn

Today, we are joined by Grace Locke Robyn, director of Thinking Space, and Professor Richard Rose, director of Therapeutic Life Story, Work International. Lovely to have both of you here this morning. I feel like we should start by saying Once upon a time and my invitation to you is I’ve done a quick introduction, but I wondered if you’d

 

00:01:06:19 – 00:01:19:07

Dawn

like to tell us a bit of your own story to set the scene for everybody before we get into some of the juicy discussion that we’re going to have later on today? Grace, would you like to tell us a bit of your story?

 

00:01:19:08 – 00:01:41:05

Grace

So once upon a time, I was a undergraduate philosopher in Yorkshire and Leeds, and I told her a friend at a house party that I wanted to set up an organization that did philosophy in public places with schoolchildren and with basically nonprofessional philosophers.

 

00:01:41:08 – 00:02:08:20

Grace

Because I understood even then that normally philosophical conversations at a recognized as being philosophical conversations seem to be happening in this really small world of academic philosophy and philosophical conversations. It seemed to me at that point. Firstly, things everyone are capable of having, and they are conversations people do have anyway, but they have their fundamental, I think

 

00:02:08:20 – 00:02:24:04

Grace

, term and to kind of finding meaning and searching for value in human life. So why aren’t we studying philosophy at schools? Why aren’t we having philosophical conversations after movies at the cinema? Why aren’t that more philosophy in pubs and cafes?

 

00:02:24:14 – 00:02:39:14

Grace

And so I decided when I was quite young that I would kind of invent this, you know, movement of a philosophy happening in public places. And then when I got a bit older, of course, I realized that this movement goes for great back to ancient Greece.

 

00:02:40:00 – 00:02:57:00

Grace

You know, there has always been some kind of public philosophy. I didn’t invent it and there was a lot of work happening in schools and things already. And I joined and was part of that. And then I set up an organization called Thinking Space, which has been going since 2008, having these kinds of philosophical conversations with them

 

00:02:57:11 – 00:03:10:09

Grace

, with our children. And and alongside that, I worked as an academic as well, and stories are part of both of those journeys and stories are a big part of my academic research and big part of my practice of public philosophy.

 

00:03:10:14 – 00:03:18:15

Dawn

Thank you, Grace. Dying to dove in and ask you lots of questions there. But first, I’ll ask Richard to do the once upon a time and introduce himself.

 

00:03:18:16 – 00:03:35:13

Richard

Well, once upon a time for me, it’s almost those of the kind of stories I could share. And obviously, all of us, a collection of stories shape us how we deal with today. So I’m going to go for a story that took place a long time ago when I was just a a small boy being a bit

 

00:03:35:13 – 00:03:50:05

Richard

naughty and my mum always used to say to me, If you don’t behave, I’m going to put you in a children’s home. And it was more of a kind of threat than a promise. However, a 17 years of age I started working in a children’s home, and so it was with great delight.

 

00:03:50:06 – 00:04:05:05

Richard

I would say, You’ve got your wish. I’m now in a children’s home and I actually used to live in the children’s home as a staff member. And being the same age as many of the children I was looking after, usually not looking after a very strange word, maybe befriending might be a better word.

 

00:04:05:23 – 00:04:26:07

Richard

It was very, very strange that this kind of concept of my mum became a reality in my little life. But what it was was a brilliant opportunity to think around, you know, how my stories of my own world being, you know, kind of a member of a large family in a very challenging world to how that journey

 

00:04:26:07 – 00:04:44:12

Richard

at that stories kind of flowed through in my work with young people. And I guess the other thing, just as Grace was saying that thinking around shaping expectation or ambition or our need to see change and change for the better, I think that one thing that I always remembered for the storytelling was that my mum, you say

 

00:04:44:12 – 00:04:58:09

Richard

to me, So you’re really good with working with children, and I would say, I hope I am, she said. Never, ever work out why. Because what you work out, why you’ll never be able to do it again. And I think stories are a natural way of us learning.

 

00:04:58:15 – 00:05:13:08

Richard

I think listening to each other, but also sharing our stories is an amazing opportunity of growth. And for me, this podcast is going to be another part of my engrossing listening to Grace, but also thinking about, you know, who we are and how we get to where we are and where we’re going.

 

00:05:13:14 – 00:05:32:20

Dawn

Thank you both for those stories. I wondered because because I always like to go back to the dictionary one and to define our terms. So I wondered what you would both say. If I asked you, I could tell you what it says in the Cambridge dictionary, but I’d be really interested to find out what, how, what, how

 

00:05:32:20 – 00:05:40:21

Dawn

you would define a story. What, what are the building blocks of? What need? What is it that needs to be present in order for a story to be a story?

 

00:05:41:02 – 00:05:50:03

Grace

You’ve opened a kind of window in chapters, chapter three of my thesis that I’m writing as a narrative. And so, but not to me to boast about this.

 

00:05:50:03 – 00:05:50:14

Richard

I just sit.

 

00:05:50:14 – 00:06:06:22

Grace

Back and one of the one of the things that I think is really, really significant about this story is one of the fundamental ways in which human beings organize knowledge and there are other forms that they may do it numerically, you know, and spatially and metaphorically.

 

00:06:06:22 – 00:06:22:04

Grace

But story is one of those fundamental structures of human experience. And one of its features is that it’s temporal. A story organizes events that happened over time in a particular kind of way, and in particular, stories focus on change.

 

00:06:23:15 – 00:06:37:21

Grace

Over a span of time, what changed? And so when you just put it like that, a sound kind of seems quite dry. But the thing that’s most significant to my work is that in that description of change over time comes out meaning and value.

 

00:06:38:18 – 00:06:55:14

Grace

So when you put events next to each other, when you organize them in the story, you can’t include everything. There is no way to tell the story of this conversation that we’re having right now and include everything. You have to omit some stuff and include other stuff.

 

00:06:55:23 – 00:07:10:17

Grace

And that curation and its editing process is all about meaning. So when I tell the story of this podcast, I take everything I think about irrelevant and doing that and making little judgments about what the podcast meant and what was valuable about it.

 

00:07:11:13 – 00:07:30:00

Grace

And when you’re talking about telling the story of a podcast, it might seem less important. But when you’re talking about telling the story of your life, why do you include some events and exclude others? It’s not just about memory, it’s about you saying these are the significant episodes in my life that from which I don’t write my

 

00:07:30:00 – 00:07:48:16

Grace

whole sense of self. So that’s why I think story is it’s change over time. And and in doing and intelligent, it’s an expression of meaning and value. one of the ways that meaning comes out is through causality. So I say these two events happened next to each other.

 

00:07:49:14 – 00:08:02:07

Grace

And the way I tell the story, I imply one calls the other. A one person intended the thing to happen. And when I say that I start getting into saying that was someone’s fault, someone should be praised for that.

 

00:08:02:09 – 00:08:09:17

Grace

That’s something they achieved. So I don’t fit the parts of the story together randomly. I do it to really express what I think matters.

 

00:08:10:00 – 00:08:21:18

Dawn

I could see lots of nods from Richard the. Well, is there anything this is that things are the same or things different that you would you would put into what you your definition of what a story is?

 

00:08:21:22 – 00:08:34:06

Richard

Well, I mean, I would love to ask those are questions now from grace, and I shall be guilty. I mean, for me, exactly that kind of idea of that sequential process that nothing is there on its own. It’s all connected.

 

00:08:35:03 – 00:08:52:22

Richard

I think that what I would say, maybe complimenting Grace’s concepts are that for me, stories are the glue of togetherness. So stories glue us that notion of bonding through storytelling. And if we look at storytelling throughout the age, you know, that was the way in which community.

 

00:08:53:05 – 00:09:15:01

Richard

That’s the way in which health. That’s the way in which, you know, concerns have been expressed. And if we look at any kind of population where you know, you understand your heritage or your sense of being is fundamentally through the stories of our allies and ourselves in the work that we do in storytelling, I think connects that

 

00:09:15:01 – 00:09:29:10

Richard

in the sense that we have this notion that story is not the truth. A story is the understanding of me or the standing of us or the understanding of we. So my stories and I think, dovetail really well with grace.

 

00:09:29:15 – 00:09:44:17

Richard

And that is that it’s about hope. It’s about stories. It’s about truth. It’s about heroes in your world. It’s about grief, loss, separation. All those things that make us who we are are the collection of stories that we’ve become.

 

00:09:44:23 – 00:09:57:23

Grace

On that on that I’m at. That thought about stories and truth I think is so useful because you might assume if someone says, tell me the story of your childhood that you can’t help but tell the truth unless you lie.

 

00:09:58:07 – 00:10:16:15

Grace

But of course, what you do in any one occasion of telling that story is do this editing process where that’s an expression of it’s an expression of how you feel about your childhood in that moment. And I was exposed to a lovely distinction between truth and verisimilitude, truth and truthiness of truth, likeness and the stories you tell

 

00:10:16:15 – 00:10:33:11

Grace

are often truth. Like, you know, they draw on facts. But in the arrangement of those facts and in the connection, like Richard said to your cultural stories and to all the stories that are told all around you that your story belongs and then it’s not right to call it truth.

 

00:10:33:17 – 00:10:47:15

Grace

It’s not like physics, but it’s just as kind of it’s just as significant to understanding who you are and the world. But the truth is not quite the right term. I think that’s really am. But I I’m actually because.

 

00:10:47:21 – 00:11:02:05

Richard

I actually love the idea of truthiness. That’s just, yeah, I must steely. I’m going to steal that if that’s okay, because I think my young people would love that that notion of. So I’m not lying, but I’m not necessarily kind of telling the truth.

 

00:11:02:05 – 00:11:15:21

Richard

I’m telling my truth. But that truthiness is just a wonderful expression. I love that. I think the one thing I would say, of course, is that, you know, when we think about our memories that we have, you know, they are stored within our brains, whether the hippocampus or whatever.

 

00:11:16:14 – 00:11:29:08

Richard

But every time we tell our story, it’s going to change every time we took out what we remember. We’re going to repackages something slightly different. So our fishermen, the catch, the fish they speak and then they speak and then this big isn’t telling a lie.

 

00:11:29:17 – 00:11:34:00

Richard

He’s just telling the story. And I think we can embrace that. We can move forward.

 

00:11:34:03 – 00:11:54:21

Grace

Yes. Is that fascinating suggestion that is memory recall or active recall or an act of creation? Do you create every time you tell that really resonates in terms of the literature and storytelling? But but like the idea that that that’s like psychological research suggests that that the creative acts of these memories, it’s really quite compelling.

 

00:11:55:02 – 00:12:08:15

Richard

Definitely. I think with our children, you see, we think about their their hurt, a sadnesses and when we speak those sets of sentences out. Then there’s the opportunity to shape that understanding, and they may reframe something slightly different.

 

00:12:08:15 – 00:12:19:06

Richard

Or they may reframe something that says, No, this is my story. This is who I am. But at that point, we can then make that kind of opportunity to think through think with children to think alongside young people.

 

00:12:19:12 – 00:12:24:18

Richard

But as you said, it’s their truthiness. And that’s just something that we should honor. I think it’s just lovely. Yeah.

 

00:12:25:03 – 00:12:45:14

Dawn

one of my most favorite storytellers writers is David Almond. And one of the things that he says in his book, in his introduction to his book Counting Stars, he says stories merge memory and dream the real and the imagined truth and lies were all natural storytellers.

 

00:12:45:14 – 00:13:02:23

Dawn

We’ve been doing it since we lived in caves. We do it automatically when we tell tales to children. We shape our memories into coherent narratives. We gossip, tell jokes and we dream. And I just think that’s that’s kind of putting together all the things that you’ve just been talking about there.

 

00:13:02:23 – 00:13:18:19

Grace

Oh, it captures the paradox of story so well and saying that although truthiness is not lies, which is quite right. Stories do also lie. We console ourselves, we deceive ourselves with stories and that’s, you know, sometimes that can be addressed therapeutically.

 

00:13:18:20 – 00:13:41:10

Grace

They’re the kind of and pernicious narratives that dominate in our life where we put two and two together and get to, you know, get five. Yeah. And that’s also kind of grand narratives, grand racist narratives or kind of grand colonial narratives of something big a big lies or a big arrangements of.

 

00:13:41:15 – 00:13:49:17

Grace

It starts off like our truthiness and then becomes contorted and distorted. And I think that’s a thing that’s really expressed there.

 

00:13:49:19 – 00:14:02:14

Dawn

one of my favorite writers, Richard, you said before that you were desperate to ask Grace some questions. I wondered if you wanted to to launch into one of your questions.

 

00:14:03:16 – 00:14:20:04

Richard

Absolutely. I mean, first of all, I think the thinking space website is extremely interesting and it brings out lots of concepts around, you know, how we tell our stories, but also how we make sense of the value of our stories and how our stories are guided and how they may guide us.

 

00:14:20:04 – 00:14:35:07

Richard

And as she was just saying, you know, depending on who tells the story, who owns the narrative of that story and the power behind that story might make us think different. Things will make us belief systems which may not be harmful to the greater people, but it may be very harmful to ourselves.

 

00:14:35:22 – 00:14:48:12

Richard

And I was just looking at some of the kind of areas you have on your discussion. I’ve looked at some of the resources, which I’m kind of critic looking at for my own use, but I’m really interested in the notion of a philosophical conversation.

 

00:14:48:12 – 00:14:54:10

Richard

I just love that phrase, and I wondered if you could maybe tell us more about that notion. A philosophical conversation?

 

00:14:54:18 – 00:15:08:09

Grace

I sure am. So you could teach philosophy as the kind of canon of great texts, and historically, philosophy has often been taught like that in universities. Kind of like the history of ideas, here are the big players. Here’s what they said.

 

00:15:09:05 – 00:15:23:22

Grace

Can you comprehend them? And a lot of departments don’t teach like that so much anymore, but certainly in public philosophy, I don’t go into schools and say, here’s a decor. He’s oppressive, some of arts key ideas. Can we do a quick quiz?

 

00:15:24:18 – 00:15:42:19

Grace

So the idea of philosophical conversation is about starting where the children in many cases are where the participants are at with the concepts that are really resonant in their life. And perhaps I’ll offer a stimulus that I think might are a series of stimuli that I think might resonate and pick up on some of those things in

 

00:15:42:19 – 00:16:04:06

Grace

conversation with them. But ultimately, it’s about them through a process of fossilization rather than instruction and developing those themes and and using some of the skills that philosophy offers to pursue them. And with with more confidence, with more clarity and with more criticality.

 

00:16:04:14 – 00:16:25:13

Grace

And but ultimately, that philosophical conversation is between the participants and and it’s not a didactic relationship. It’s a facilitative when it comes to my role in it. So that’s what we mean by philosopher of philosophical conversation. We also talk about inquiry, and this is an idea that comes from John Dewey.

 

00:16:25:13 – 00:16:40:10

Grace

But of course, it’s completely prevalent in all forms of education. And that’s the idea that you learn more effectively, not when you’re presented with the kind of finished product of somebody else’s critical thinking. Here’s what they call agonized over for decades.

 

00:16:40:16 – 00:16:58:14

Grace

Read it and kind of and read it and understand it. And it’s about saying, here’s a problem, you know, and helping you to kind of articulate what problems are there in your life and your understanding in your understanding of a particular concept that are big for you.

 

00:16:58:17 – 00:17:20:23

Grace

The concept of friendship, the concept of of play. How can you kind of figure that out for yourselves together? Drawing on the different native experiences and skills of the group, rather than being told, Hey, look, there’s been loads of work by Aristotle done on friendships, and I’ll tell you all about it.

 

00:17:21:03 – 00:17:27:20

Grace

There’s sometimes there’s a place for that at the end or some point during a process of inquiry. But that’s just not where we begin with the conversation.

 

00:17:28:01 – 00:17:48:01

Richard

So in a sense, and you’re kind of sharing. Licensing stories of those you’re participating with and then what you’re looking at is that kind of, you know, potential thinking that might lead to or might make sense of some of those kind of conceived ideas, whether they be planted or whether they are organic or whether they are somewhere

 

00:17:48:07 – 00:18:04:12

Richard

like you were saying, it might be an issue around, for instance. You know, we’ve heard a lot more around the impact of Black Life Matters. For instance, we do a lot more around intergenerational trauma and cultural lens. So those kind of things in the real world, and they’re looking at that from then maybe the perspectives of certain

 

00:18:04:12 – 00:18:09:10

Richard

philosophy or certain philosophical thinking, but keeping an eye on the child?

 

00:18:09:12 – 00:18:26:04

Grace

Yeah, sometimes that’s why the perspectives of Davis will come in. But sometimes we’ll just be able to get really very far on the intuitions and reasonings and examples and stories in the room and must say that something that’s kind of changed about my practice as time has gone on, as well as when I started, I think I

 

00:18:26:04 – 00:18:39:22

Grace

had a slightly more intellectual, ascetic view of philosophy. So let’s keep the examples. Let’s just use a few examples. Let’s really concentrate on the kind of reasoning processes that we used to make sure that the arguments you make about justified.

 

00:18:40:09 – 00:18:57:01

Grace

And as time’s gone on, I found how deeply significant is that everything we talk about is really rooted in people’s experience and extended examples from participants. Often, that stories become more and more resonant, providing everybody can get kind of explore them and ask questions about them.

 

00:18:57:14 – 00:19:19:13

Grace

So, um, my my work has become a lot more kind of what the philosophers might look at as interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary. And I think that’s probably because of working with lots of artists like people from Blue Carbon. They’re like members of their staff and who who really appreciate the emotional dimension of thinking things through.

 

00:19:19:23 – 00:19:33:21

Grace

And now in our work, the emotional the effective is just as important as the cognitive, and I see no distinction. I see we’re not thinking in our heads with a little bit of emotion. It’s much more thoroughly ineffective and cognitive kind of business.

 

00:19:34:03 – 00:19:47:02

Richard

So in a way that that opportunity for a young person, I think this is where we come from as well. And sense of that therapeutic story work, which is that notion of a creative space where we can think about who we are and where we come from and where we’re going.

 

00:19:47:10 – 00:20:01:15

Richard

But then we can actually compare and contrast. We can consider where that comes from and maybe think around what that is in our social learning. And I know that you’re very much around pedagogy so long that learning lifeline if you like the reality of our world.

 

00:20:02:03 – 00:20:16:09

Richard

But then almost using that concept of a theory for want of a better word around that kind of. You know, sort of curtailments Premiere the wrong word, but that kind of opportunity to hang on to something that, yeah, OK, that makes sense now.

 

00:20:16:14 – 00:20:31:13

Richard

Or so it’s not me. Sometimes this is something that we all feel. Or it’s okay to have these feelings because what’s happening here is and I think a lot of our children are looking for meaning, looking for, you know, a way I feel this way when my, you know, my friends don’t, why is it?

 

00:20:31:13 – 00:20:44:07

Richard

I get angry internally and my friends don’t. And then when we look at stories and the stories they’ve lived through and the stories and how they shape them, you know, sometimes I would use kind of developmental theory. Sometimes I would use theories of the brain.

 

00:20:45:01 – 00:21:02:09

Richard

But using that philosophical concepts, I think it’s we don’t do well. And I think that’s why I was excited to hear today from your perspective about how we might be more thoughtful around that philosophy, in the philosophy journey that we all go on and how we then can make sense of substances, but also like excitement in our

 

00:21:02:09 – 00:21:03:00

Richard

achievements.

 

00:21:03:07 – 00:21:12:01

Grace

Do you do you find that the children that you worked with the young people find find commonalities in some of their life stories?

 

00:21:12:06 – 00:21:26:01

Richard

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think there’s not just children, sadly. So a lot of professionals that work with hurt children will actually almost have a sixth sense. Oh, I’m going to read now X, or I’m going to work out now that mom or dad was in care themselves.

 

00:21:26:19 – 00:21:45:14

Richard

And so almost you’re looking at way marks which are absolutely, you know, kind of the wrong thing to do because then you start to pigeonhole children into a particular journey. When I think what I’m hearing from you and certainly what I celebrate is the uniqueness of every individual and when we can help young people to understand that

 

00:21:45:14 – 00:21:59:15

Richard

they are the authors of their own life, they’re not defined by their past, then that we can make a difference. And I think that clearly, unfortunately, not just for children, is with professionals around these young people. We are very quick to say, Oh, well, we know where this is going.

 

00:21:59:23 – 00:22:14:17

Richard

Well, actually, we don’t. We can we could shape that child to where we think it’s going, or we can give that child the freedom to think, the freedom to make sense, the freedom to be. And I think that’s what I love about what I read on your site that you know, you’re not going in with preconceived constructs

 

00:22:14:17 – 00:22:16:17

Richard

, you’re going in with the concepts of constructs.

 

00:22:16:22 – 00:22:33:12

Grace

Yeah. So it’s fundamental to our work that you anticipate the sort of things that might happen and come up, but you don’t legislate. There is no sense in which you say at the end of this session, we will have concluded that justice involves everybody getting the same thing, some thing.

 

00:22:33:18 – 00:22:48:07

Grace

But it’s really interesting thinking about professionals, pigeonholing students and so young people’s clients stories because part of narrative in a way is to think in terms of genres, you know, is this a tragedy? Is this a love story?

 

00:22:48:10 – 00:23:04:20

Grace

And that those generic ideas of the shape of lives and the shape of stories can be part of our structuring of our own life? You know, when I met my husband after a couple of months when he was, of course not my husband, I thought, You know, is this the person I’m going to marry?

 

00:23:04:20 – 00:23:16:00

Grace

Is this the kind of is this the big grand love story of my life? Or is this person going to be an incidental player, you know? So this sense of genre is impacting on my lived experiences as I go through that experience.

 

00:23:16:19 – 00:23:36:11

Grace

But you’re right, kind of genre can have its place as a kind of shorthand, just like all the pigeon holes and stereotypes we use. But to what extent can we break out the genre? And if your children think they are that they are embroiled in the tragedy, that’s the shape of their story.

 

00:23:36:11 – 00:23:57:12

Grace

They’re a tragic hero or something. And realizing that they have some power to not just do it, to change by action, but to change by retelling, like you’ve described, what has gone before to derive new meaning by triumph over adversity or a sense of being loved and valuable person throughout the whole of their life.

 

00:23:57:23 – 00:24:05:11

Grace

And that and that’s almost like knowledge you need to kind of know that’s possible to believe and trust that that is possible.

 

00:24:05:11 – 00:24:18:21

Richard

But the people are I mean, so we’re so alike because the people that are working with us or talking with us have to believe that too, because I have worked with a lot of young people who will say to me, Well, I’m just end up like my mom and dad.

 

00:24:19:02 – 00:24:28:10

Richard

I’m going to end up in trouble. I’m going to end up, you know, having lots of different relationships. I’m going to end up my children going into care. And it’s that script change that we want to start with the script.

 

00:24:28:13 – 00:24:47:21

Richard

We want to say you don’t have to be defined. But the trouble I think sometimes is that we as professionals around those young people who do work with generations of young people going through the system almost kind of accept that it’s a likelihood that very often I’m very lucky I travel across the world talking with and thinking

 

00:24:47:21 – 00:25:00:21

Richard

with organizations, working with children. And, you know, we look at residential care, for instance, a lot of organizations and countries will look at residential care for children as the last resort. It’s all gone wrong. There’s nothing else we can do.

 

00:25:01:01 – 00:25:16:02

Richard

We’ll put them in residential care. Whereas actually, if we looked at it in a very different way, if we looked at, you know, this is not necessarily a script. This is a story that we can engage in, a story that we can help children make sense of, but also story, as you were saying, that may need new

 

00:25:16:02 – 00:25:31:07

Richard

heroes or may need a new ending or may actually need to be almost like a bubble burst. And the greatest thing we see is when you know we are able to say to young people, You know, this is this is your story.

 

00:25:31:07 – 00:25:42:22

Richard

This is about who you are and then children towards you and say, Hey, Richard, it wasn’t my fault, was it? It’s not my fault these things happened, but it is something that I can do something about. And once we have that, then we know we can move forward.

 

00:25:43:06 – 00:26:00:12

Grace

I think that there’s some really compelling stuff in the kind of like literary theory stuff that I write as part of my own research about about causation and how when people engage with stories, they they construct the story.

 

00:26:00:13 – 00:26:14:20

Grace

It’s not just the teller of the story. So if a child is told a story about how you were born and then your dad left? The child goes, My dad left because of me because I was born and all people do.

 

00:26:15:00 – 00:26:34:02

Grace

This is a famous Ian Foster quote about plot. The king died and then the Queen died. And what do readers do? They say the king died of grief at the Queen died of grief. Very so they in plot those incidents.

 

00:26:35:02 – 00:26:50:02

Grace

And it’s such a natural psychological thing to do for humans that are so trained and, you know, drenched in stories like we are, it’s it’s pretty hard to shake. But of course, you know, like correlations, not causation. So, so, you know, it might be false.

 

00:26:50:02 – 00:27:01:13

Grace

It might be one of those kind of untruths. We tell ourselves this story, but I could see how deeply damaging it is to carry that kind of responsibility through our whole life.

 

00:27:01:14 – 00:27:12:17

Richard

Well, certainly. And again, I mean, it’s example just to think about a practical example. A young person I was working with was saying to me, Well, it’s my fault that my mummy and daddy didn’t stay together. It’s my fault.

 

00:27:12:17 – 00:27:21:05

Richard

My daddy used to hurt my mummy, and if I hadn’t been born, then they would have managed because I, you know, I’ve got two or three brothers and sisters older than me. I was just the one that went wrong.

 

00:27:21:07 – 00:27:35:23

Richard

So that’s your catalyst. And then when do you actually work with that child about their story? And then you tell the story of their parents, not the child’s story and then the story, their parents as well. You know, when they first met your mum and dad, he found it very hard to live together sometimes, and mummy remembers

 

00:27:35:23 – 00:27:49:10

Richard

and dad says. And then they used to get into trouble when the police would come because they were hurt and sadness, and sometimes mummy had to go to hospital. Blah blah blah. The child looks at me goes, It was happening before I was born, so it wasn’t my fault.

 

00:27:50:04 – 00:28:05:04

Richard

It wasn’t that I was born, and that was what all went wrong. And I have to say, Well, no, it wasn’t your fault. Or, you know, no, it wasn’t because you were born. I didn’t need to. And I think that’s the Juliet of stories that it’s actually in the the child and that you mentioned with sense of

 

00:28:05:04 – 00:28:22:14

Richard

self is that sense of self that says, when maybe I am worthy, maybe I am actually important. Maybe I am lovable. And I think that that that, as you say, that kind of way in which our stories are told can become our biggest anchor to stop us recovering.

 

00:28:23:01 – 00:28:35:04

Richard

Maybe the way we need to tell our stories is through allowing that child to make sense of who they are first and then share the stories of those involved in that world so that they might then, you know, reflect and to make sense.

 

00:28:35:04 – 00:28:45:11

Richard

And I think that’s the bit I loved about your website. When you’re working with young people and you know you’re thinking around a subject material and then you’re thinking about what does that mean to them and how do they see the world?

 

00:28:45:19 – 00:28:55:02

Richard

And then you can actually kind of think about that new thinking and that thinking space that you as beautiful Typekit, by the way, is a wonderful opportunity for us all to take stock.

 

00:28:55:17 – 00:29:14:15

Dawn

You’ve both mentioned they’re telling stories and people listening to stories. And we’ve had some people who’ve been listening to this podcast who’ve called him with a question. And I wondered if we could hear their question and then get your thoughts on it.

 

00:29:14:20 – 00:29:22:11

Dawn

I think we’ve got two questions from Lucy, and we can hear the first one by the power of podcast.

 

00:29:22:17 – 00:29:31:04

Speaker 4

When does the storyteller become the listener and the listener become the storyteller.

 

00:29:31:12 – 00:29:34:07

Dawn

Who would like to comment on Lucy’s question?

 

00:29:35:02 – 00:29:53:23

Grace

Thinking about like literature, I sort of touched on this slightly before, but Roland Bart, the critic, sort of famously said that the author was dead, and that old story actually came from the audience, from the listener and from what they extracted and reconstructed things from the text.

 

00:29:54:20 – 00:30:15:23

Grace

That seems when you’re talking about the stories of an individual’s life that seems to go too far, but I’m very taken by the idea of construction of meaning. And I think that when you are a storyteller, you are engaged and you only have part of the truth and how it falls to other people’s eyes is a big

 

00:30:16:14 – 00:30:28:20

Grace

, a big thing for, for kind of creating the meaning. Now, sometimes when you listen back to the stories that you have told previously or when you tell yourself stories, you can get this emergence of being a storyteller and listener.

 

00:30:29:06 – 00:30:46:01

Grace

So in this, sometimes there, like therapeutic or educational interventions, will encourage you to listen to the story you’ve just told and that kind of critical distance from your own story. Can I make you ask kind of how is this sounding to other listeners if I treat myself as one of those listeners?

 

00:30:46:11 – 00:31:01:06

Grace

I could find that kind of quite fruitful. one of the things I do in my practice is to echo things that people have just said and a useful education aid, but also, I guess why they used therapeutically. So you can hear just fragments of those things you said to know precisely your words.

 

00:31:01:22 – 00:31:15:23

Grace

It’s a technique that my colleague Peter Wall-E’s has really extensively pretty interesting to hear back what you just said. I have another. Its voice and it’s an opportunity to be a listener and to have a bit of critical, a bit of a critical distance with what it is, you just said.

 

00:31:16:16 – 00:31:32:09

Richard

And I would just add really that, you know, stories and sharing stories and listening and listening to stories is part and parcel of the same journey. You know, our stories are kind of our past, our stories on our present, our stories on our future.

 

00:31:32:13 – 00:31:51:20

Richard

It’s a combination of all. And as we tell a story, we’re also listening as we hear a story. We’re also telling and that’s sharing life sharing stories is key really to how we develop, how we learn, how we shape, how we make sense, how we, you know, kind of create opportunities, but also how we, you know, stop

 

00:31:51:20 – 00:32:11:23

Richard

things that may be not helpful. So I think it’s about not, let’s say, being a storyteller or being a story listener. I think it’s being a part of the journey, which is, you know, a much a mutual experience of share, tell, tale share and each with each time I work with a child, I’ve learned more about me

 

00:32:12:02 – 00:32:20:12

Richard

. Each time I hear a child, I’m thinking more about them. But actually, together we’re talking about we. And it’s a cohesion. It’s it’s a glue.

 

00:32:20:18 – 00:32:29:20

Dawn

Thank you. I think we’ve got one more question from Lucy as we come to the home to nearly the end of our story. But time for one more question from Lucy.

 

00:32:30:07 – 00:32:43:17

Speaker 4

My favorite way of experience in a story is with all the people listening and watching together. What are your favorite ways to experience a story?

 

00:32:44:01 – 00:33:06:05

Richard

I think what I would say is, I mean, my journey in therapy to love story work is very much around working in a tripartite. So I don’t do the work I do on my own with a child. I engage with their carer, their carer, maybe their birth family, connected family, adopt in fostering school, whatever it might be

 

00:33:06:05 – 00:33:19:20

Richard

, but with another so the three people not only think about and share the story of the young person, we might be helping through difficult spaces. But also the young person has the opportunity to hear from the carer and from me.

 

00:33:20:00 – 00:33:41:07

Richard

I hear from the carer, the child and the carer hears from me and the child. So in a way, I guess. Stories on our own are helpful. They can be very confidential, they can be nurturing. But stories that we share, I think, are much more around that notion of having that space, but also having the opportunity to

 

00:33:41:07 – 00:33:56:18

Richard

consider to reflect when maybe, you know, the world that we live in is so fast and so quick and so unpredictable. And I might go and see a child for an hour every two weeks. But really, the storytelling happens between the hour, the next hour I come.

 

00:33:57:09 – 00:34:09:12

Richard

So the tripartite idea about sharing life and sharing stories about sharing who we are, but also thinking, you know, not just with the young person, but with those around the young person makes that opportunity much more rich.

 

00:34:09:15 – 00:34:29:14

Grace

Oh, I find that really powerful multiple perspectives sort of contributing to something more than a single story can tell on its own and how your own story might be reformulated when you hear somebody else’s take on something. I think that’s really rich and thinking slightly more about stories that you may consume as a kind of ordinary person

 

00:34:30:02 – 00:34:51:14

Grace

. Am not an educator and not therapist and thinking about novels and films, and I like both of those ways of even being exposed to stories. It’s a big part of my research to say actually, exposure to books, films, soaps, podcasts, video adverts that part of your ethics, education consuming all of these stories.

 

00:34:51:20 – 00:35:12:23

Grace

And one of the things I think a novel does is show you someone’s thinking and to realize for all the surface things that you see, there’s this deep, deep well of being underneath a thinking and feeling, and a novel allows you to read those thoughts silently so that in your head to almost think those thoughts, the thoughts

 

00:35:12:23 – 00:35:28:04

Grace

of another person. I think that’s incredibly ethically illuminating to to live, to some degree, the inner life of another human being. And film shows you film can tell you everything. It just says somebody says something and then they give a little sideways glance.

 

00:35:28:04 – 00:35:42:18

Grace

That means the complete opposite, and it tunes you to say to seeing the story and all the things unsaid. And of course, that comes into life with real people when, you know, it was a pause or a glance or fidget, and you realize that there’s so much more there that you need to interpret or that you might

 

00:35:42:18 – 00:35:51:20

Grace

never know in a person’s story. So I find both these poems are basically fantastic ways of training yourself to listen to stories.

 

00:35:52:14 – 00:36:08:04

Dawn

I could sit and talk or sit and listen to both of you all day, but sadly, we’ve come to the end the end of our story of our podcast today. So I would like to say a huge thank you to Grace and Richard for your generous conversation this morning.

 

00:36:08:22 – 00:36:27:09

Dawn

I hope people will take away thoughts if they’ve been listening to the podcast. Our next podcast is a roundtable conversation where we’re inviting a foster carer, pastoral support worker and an artist to think about the all about me experience.

 

00:36:27:18 – 00:36:47:00

Dawn

So if you’ve got a question that you would like to post to Blue Cabin, you can do that on our website. If you go to We Are Blue Cup Incom Forward Slash podcast, you’ll find a little button with a speak pipe on it and you’ll have 90 seconds to ask us a question.

 

00:36:47:10 – 00:37:09:16

Dawn

And so please any thoughts or comments. Use the speak pipe. Thanks again to Grace and Richard and I look forward to being in a podcast room again with you very soon. Thank you. Bye bye. Whether you’re a foster carer, someone who has experience of the care system or you work with children and young people, we hope this

 

00:37:09:16 – 00:37:28:17

Dawn

episode has given you an insight into how we could make life story work better for young people. We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can tweet us at We Are Blue Cabin or if you’re one of the 15 hundred people taking part in our Creative Life Story Work Learning program, you can always get in touch through the

 

00:37:28:17 – 00:37:37:12

Dawn

online learning platform if you’d like to listen to future episodes. Remember to subscribe. Wherever it is, you usually get your podcasts.

 

00:37:39:08 – 00:37:47:16

Speaker 5

The Creative Life Story Work podcast is an annual media production for Blue Carbon. Find out more at Onyour Dot Media.