The Power
of Storytelling:
Examples
Examples
Stories are as different as the people telling them. They can be expressed in different formats, forms, and mediums. The key point in Transformative Storywork is that the story should be at the centre of what the storyteller wants to express. Here are some examples that show a variety of stories supported through the Transformative Storywork approach.
It is important to understand that the process for developing these stories has been tailored to the specific context, focus issue, and group of storytellers. For each example, the approach was based on the principles and elements of practice in this guide, but the processes varied significantly.
Where Was I?
Storytellers:
Eunice, Linda, Blieme, and Joy
This story was made in Benin City, Nigeria in April 2023, with a group of primary and secondary school teachers. The process used was composite storytelling.
Facilitation/process design by Alison Buckler, Jennifer Agbaire, and Joanna Wheeler. Ayomide Oluseye was the ethnographer for the workshop, and observed the storytelling process.
Short summary
“This is a story about exclusion in education but not in the way you might imagine.”
This first line of ‘Where Was I?’ gives a clue as to how it explores the complexity of educational inclusion and exclusion in Nigeria.
Told from the perspective of a woman teacher, it details her experience of trying to help one of her pupils, Osatu, who has dropped out of school because her father is prioritising the education of her brothers. The teacher meets Osatu in the market, where she is selling corn cakes. The teacher visits each of the powerful men in Osatu’s life, trying to convince them of her potential. None are strongly opposed to Osatu having an education but nor are they motivated to re-enrol her in school.
The teacher then reflects back on her own childhood and her father’s abandonment of the family because the children were daughters. This is a story within a story that captures how educational exclusion is embedded within wider, gendered exclusions, which are replicated across generations.
Eventually, the teacher seeks support from a group of women who agree to pay Osatu’s school fees, so that she can return to school. The story ends with the teacher reflecting on the exclusion of teachers from decisions about education that can impact on how children experience inclusion and exclusion:
“The fathers and the principals make decisions about girls’ education – but it is us, the class teachers, who are with them and know their potential… The curriculum – who wrote this – where was I? The way we are expected to teach students is lecture method – who decided this – where was I? When decisions were being made about Osatu’s future” – where was I
The process for making this story
‘Where Was I?’ was developed through a creative, collaborative, composite story process. It is a fictional account of educational exclusion in Nigeria, although it includes details and examples from the different storytellers’ lives.
At this storytelling workshop in Benin City, Nigeria, we adapted Transformative Story’s composite storytelling approach. A group of 13 teachers were supported to share experiences and insights into inclusion and exclusion, then self-organised into groups, focusing on ideas they were especially interested in. Each group developed a fictional story, drawn from a composite of their personal experiences, to communicate messages about inclusion and exclusion.
The key message of this story is that young people’s educational exclusion is embedded in sociocultural, economic, and political norms, in which teachers’ own lives and experiences are intimately interconnected: the teachers believed it was impossible to understand young people’s exclusion in schools without stepping back and seeing bigger pictures of societal exclusion.
This message initially surfaced when teachers’ motivations to support inclusion were expressed in relation to common characteristics or experiences around, for example, gender issues. Empathy with these issues opened up discussions of a deeper exploration of how teachers’ experiences influenced their engagement with students and colleagues. Sometimes this supported inclusion; sometimes it exacerbated exclusionary practices.
Since this story was made:
Since the workshop, ‘Where was I?’ has been shared on the Ibali website, shown to 40 education stakeholders at an Inclusion Engagement event in Nigeria, presented at an academic conference workshop on storytelling and inclusion in Oxford, UK, and presented at a seminar for academic colleagues at the University of the Free State in South Africa.
What the storytellers say about it:
Reflections from the teachers’, after the workshop.
Up to master’s level, a definition of inclusion is forced on us. You didn’t force a definition but helped us to think about how we would define it. We didn’t even know that we were being excluded in a way, because our understanding of exclusion and inclusion has never been asked; even by us, we have not asked ourselves before […] When someone gives you a definition of something, you are happy… when someone helps you to generate your own definition, it makes you even happier.
Storytelling workshop participant, Nigeria
I’ve realised that it’s not that teachers don’t believe in individual differences, it’s mainly that we don’t have time to look for them. We see those who can succeed and those who can’t – those are the only differences we have time to see. You have made inclusion seem more achievable because what we have seen through making the stories is that inclusion can be in the small things – all of the small things – not just the big things – not just about who can succeed and who cannot.
Storytelling workshop participant, Nigeria
Life Through a Hearing Aid
Storytellers:
Augusta, Sara, and Claire
This story was made in Dartington, UK in August 2023, with a group of primary and secondary school teachers and education support staff. The process used was composite storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Joanna Wheeler, Alison Buckler, and Jennifer Agbaire. Katherine Collins was the ethnographer for the workshop.
Short summary
Agatha is a bright child growing up in Nigeria. She wears a hearing aid, which is large and not especially effective, which subjects her to cruel comments and physical abuse from fellow pupils and dismissive teachers. To cope, she sits at the back, puts her head down, and tries not to draw attention to herself. She holds close small kindnesses from her family, and teachers who can see how bright she is, but everyone who loves her worries for her future.
As a teen, Agatha and her family emigrate to the UK, and Agatha is astounded at the equipment available to support her hearing: teachers wear microphones that transmit directly to her new, discreet hearing aids, so that she can move about freely, hearing clearly. She passes her A-Levels, goes to university, trains to be a teacher, gets married, and starts a family. Everyone, including Agatha, is amazed and delighted: no one imagined these things would be possible with her disability.
The end of the story finds Agatha in a classroom. She sees a boy at the back of the classroom with his head down. She walks towards him, knowing what to do.
Key messages in the narrative of this story are around the complex combination of personal and practical support that children with disabilities need, and the importance of not limiting their future aspirations through prejudice and fear. Visually, the message of the story is about how children can be defined by the noticeable signs of their disabilities: in Agatha’s case, her hearing aids. As she grew up and had access to newer technologies, her hearing aids became smaller in a practical way, but the storytellers used this shrinking technology as a metaphor for how Agatha’s confidence grew and how she increasingly presented her whole self to the world (of which the hearing aids were relevant but not defining).
The process for making this story
This story is based on the real-life experiences of one of the storytellers, although it contains fictional and composite elements, drawn from the experiences of the other storytellers who work closely with children with disabilities in their own school contexts.
In this storytelling approach, storytellers share experiences and perspectives with the group through a range of creative and dialogical activities. From these activities, the facilitators and storytellers generate ‘story seeds’ which are intended to inspire story ideas and development. These three storytellers chose the seeds ‘Journey of Self’ and ‘Passion and Strength’. They were moved by the true story that underpinned the main narrative and were keen to learn more from each other about life growing up with a disability in the two contexts of Nigeria and the UK.
They were conscious of not painting Agatha’s childhood experiences in Nigeria through a deficit perspective; they wanted to emphasise the love of her family and the care of some of Agatha’s teachers, but highlight that, despite these, the lack of resources for Agatha, and wider societal perspectives, limited possibilities for her future.
Since this story was made:
This story was created to be a physical storybook. The three storytellers – all working in schools in the UK – are using the book to start conversations about disability and inclusion with their learners and colleagues. The local library of one of the teachers requested copies to have on display. The head teacher of one of the schools has asked them to write some more stories, collaborating with children who have other disabilities.
Additionally, the teachers have been using some of the storytelling activities with their learners and one has been asked to lead a storytelling activity in a staff training event.
What the storytellers say about it:
Reflections from the teachers’, after the workshop.
“For me the storytelling process has shown me that in many educational settings inclusion is just as relevant to teachers - their humanity is overlooked. We don’t apply the same thinking about inclusion for children to how we think about and treat colleagues. Really we just need more support if we are to teach more inclusively. Our stories have shown me that more can be done to recognise that we are humans too.”
Storytelling workshop participant, UK
“I think it is interesting that we all wrote our stories to have a happy ending. Maybe we’re just optimists! But I think the happy endings actually remind me that many children who are excluded do not have a happy ending, or the ending might seem happy, but then what? I want to know what happens to all of the characters in our story next! Or I want us to re-write our stories with an unhappy ending so we can think about why sometimes inclusion fails young people.”
Storytelling workshop participant, UK
Life I lived
Storytellers:
Babie Flow
This story was made in Cape Town, South Africa in January 2023 by Babie Flow, as part of a group workshop with young people. The process used was individual storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Joanna Wheeler, Alison Buckler, Jennifer Agbaire, Faith Mkwananzi, and Yusra Price. Katherine Collins was the ethnographer for the workshop.
Short summary
This story is told as a rap. The story begins with Flow’s early childhood, where he feels alone and like he doesn’t have a place or family. He describes his complicated and painful relationship with his mother, and how he felt pressure at school and from his peers. This leaves him feeling isolated and lonely. He says, ‘All around the world, I couldn’t find one person I could talk to.’ He describes not going to school and walking around the streets. Then he finds music, which gives him ‘someone to talk to’ and a reason to be back at school. His story ends with him saying that ‘This is the life I’m living.’
The process for making this story
At the beginning of the story, Flow did not have a clear idea of what story he wanted to tell. He had very broad ideas, mainly focused on his interest in music. Although the workshop was focused on experiences of inclusion and exclusion in education, for Flow, this could not be separated from his wider experience of exclusion from his family. Flow told a more literal and detailed version of his story in small group work and in story circles (group storytelling development sessions). When he decided to tell his final story through a rap, he shifted the story into a format that fitted in lyrics that he could rap. The lyrics of his final story are like a set of signposts to his wider experience. The images in his story and the rhythm and music convey much of the emotional context. Shade and texture in the images, as well as shapes, convey a sense of tension and movement in the story and add details to the lyrics (rather than merely illustrate what the words mean).
Untitled
Storyteller:
Joanne
This story was made in an online workshop in July 2021. The process used was individual storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Joanna Wheeler and Alison Buckler.
Short summary
Joanne’s story is made up entirely of images and sounds. It starts with images of a stormy sky and the sound of waves on a stony beach which merges into images and sounds of the explosion in the Port of Beirut in 2020. The story then moves to sounds and images of protest about the corruption that enabled the explosion to happen. There are sounds of shouting and sirens. Next, we see fingers typing on a computer keyboard and two passports (one Lebanese and one Canadian) lying to one side next to a cup of coffee. This image represents the decision that Joanne had to make about whether to stay in Lebanon after the series of crises initiated by the port explosion. This image fades into images of beautiful countryside, historic monuments, a cat playing, and fruit being mixed with sugar: representing the many aspects of life in Lebanon that Joanne loves. Finally, we see her place the two passports in a drawer and firmly close it, representing her decision to stay in Lebanon. The final image of the story is at the beach again, but now it is sunny, and we hear the sounds of walking on stones as water washes over them. The image suggests going forward towards a more positive future.
The process for making this story
Joanne made this story through an online storytelling workshop over five days, with participants from around the world. The focus for the workshop was on what participants had learnt during the previous year, which was marked by Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions. As this was the first time that we had tried to run the storytelling process online, we experimented with different ways to adapt exercises and techniques to an online version of the workshop. There were also multiple opportunities for participants to give feedback on the process.
Joanne was trained as a film-maker, so she was very confident with the technical side of making her story. On the development of the content of her story, this was more difficult, as it involved a number of personal and painful experiences and choices. Ultimately, Joanne opted for a format for her story that she knew she could share widely on social media without being identified. She used images and sounds to convey the story because they allowed her to remain anonymous, but also because she felt that words limited what she wanted to convey.
Since this story was made:
Since Joanne made the story, it has been shared with numerous Transformative Story workshops groups, to show how a story can be told in a powerful way without spoken words.
What the storytellers say about it:
“At the start of the workshop I didn’t really want to share my story with the group, but now I am so proud of it I want to put it on social media! Technology was always against us but this workshop helped me to realise that these are just tools: emotion is what’s important in story crafting and facilitation.”
Storytelling workshop participant, online workshop
Checkmate
Storytellers:
Siddiqah
This story was made in a workshop in Cambridge, UK in July 2022 by Siddiqah, as part of a group workshop with young people. The process used was individual storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Alison Buckler, Yusra Price, Jennifer Agbaire and Joanna Wheeler. Katherine Collins and Jane Nebe were ethnographers at the workshop.
Short summary
The story starts in a history class. The topic is Black History, and the narrator, who is one of the only black students in the school, is asked to explain something to her classmates. She is embarrassed at the attention, irritated at the assumption that she will know the answer, and ashamed that she doesn’t.
During lockdown, the narrator joins online communities and engages with Black History for the first time. She finds spaces she is passionate about and thrives on the energy of the movement of learning and thinking that she becomes a part of.
Back in school, the topic comes up again, and she is ready to learn, on her own terms.
The process for making this story:
The storyteller uses a chess board to illustrate this story. Siddiqah uses stop-motion animation to show her character – made of plasticine and distinct from the other pieces – moving around the board causing chaos.
Since this story was made:
This story has been shown at a storytelling workshop at an academic conference at the University of Oxford, UK, and in Miami, Florida, and at a seminar on inclusion and resistance in education at the University of the Free State in South Africa. It has been shown at various inclusion learning events, including a storytelling showcase in London, UK for more than 40 educators and practitioners working on issues of inclusion.
It is being incorporated into a schools inclusion training in London and in the work of a major UK charity for young people. Siddiqah is also co-authoring a book chapter about her story with the Ibali team.
What the storytellers say about it:
“It’s odd to look back at this story two years later. In some ways, I think I would do it differently now, but on the other hand, I’m really glad it exists as a snapshot of who I was then. Young people are often misrepresented. It is important that we have opportunities to express ourselves creatively, to share our experiences with people who can make the education system more inclusive.”
Storytelling workshop participant, UK
“I loved listening to other people’s stories in the workshop… the one about religion… I feel like I could relate so much to that story I literally had goosebumps, I was like oh my gosh, I get it.”
Storytelling workshop participant, UK
Wild Waters
Storytellers:
Nolubabalo and Antoinette
This story was made in a workshop in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2023. The process used was composite storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Alison Buckler, Faith Mkwananzi, and Yusra Price. Katherine Collins was the ethnographer at the workshop.
Summary
Wild Waters is about a teacher who is struggling to cope with a child called Junior. His disruptive behaviour – always tapping and drumming on the desk – is making her job teaching a class of 45 learners even more challenging. Attempts to get help from her senior teachers leave her feeling inadequate. An attempt to engage Junior’s family leaves her feeling guilty. She realises she is ‘on her own’.
Eventually, through an inter-school event and a donation from a friend, she discovers a way of connecting with Junior.
‘Wild Waters’ aims to communicate messages of intergenerational poverty in townships, how small acts of noticing and kindness from teachers can positively change a child’s experience of school, and the power of music to capture children’s imaginations.
The process for making this story
This story was made by two teachers from Cape Town. At the workshop, we adapted Transformative Story’s collaborative storytelling approach. Ten teachers organised themselves into groups, with a particular focus on the aspects of inclusion and exclusion they were interested in. Each group developed a fictional story, drawn from a composite of their personal experiences, to communicate messages about inclusion and exclusion.
In this approach, the story develops from a ‘story seed’, which is generated through a range of creative and dialogic activities designed to explore the storytellers’ personal experiences of the key issue. ‘Wild Waters’ was such an inspirational seed for these teachers that they chose to name the story after it. The metaphor for them captured the dangerous and unpredictable contexts teachers in townships are working in: many examples were shared during story development, including guns being fired across playgrounds, teachers having to smuggle children out of school in the boots of their cars, having to remain vigilant about their belongings at all times in school, and feeling helpless at the levels of poverty, addiction, and abuse in many of their learners’ homes.
This is an audio story with just two images to capture how teachers’ experiences move between chaos and calm. There are two versions of the story, one read by each of the storytellers.
Since this story was made:
Wild Waters has been shown at education and inclusion stakeholder engagement events in Nigeria and the UK, as well as at storytelling methods workshops in the UK.
What the storytellers say about it:
“The way we moved between real life and fiction has inspired me. The unfolding process of a story that is real, but not true, and how we learned different things through this unfolding, has made me reflect on different ways to teach about apartheid to my learners. It can sometimes feel too real for them. This process has made me wonder if fictionalising it might help them to engage more”.
Storytelling workshop participant, South Africa
“For me, in my language, Ibali really does mean ‘story’! And I have loved the opportunity to do Ibali differently. Never in my life have I written a story – even though I tell my learners to write stories all of the time! But I think I have had a closed view of what Ibali is… for me, the teamwork part, how we wrote these stories together, these are all of our stories, even though they are fiction”.
Storytelling workshop participant, South Africa
The Bitter Life of an Ant
Story title:
‘The Bitter Life of an Ant’
Storytellers:
Praise
This story was made in a workshop in Benin City, Nigeria in April 2023. The process used was individual storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Faith Mkwananzi and Joanna Wheeler. Jane Nebe was the ethnographer at the workshop.
Summary
Praise’s story is about being oppressed by an older student at boarding school. In the story, Praise chose an ant to represent herself because ‘They are small and are always pushed by larger animals.’ She chose an elephant to represent the older student.
She described arriving at boarding school and feeling excited to be there and meet new people, while also feeling sad about leaving her family behind.
She describes being woken up by the older student in the middle of the night and forced to fetch water. When Praise refused to go, the other girl slapped her and beat her up. Praise said she felt ‘helpless and in pain’. Praise describes being confused about why this was happening to her. She goes on to say that her life had a lot of ‘ups and downs’ after this, but that she continued to be maltreated until her mother came at the start of the holidays. Praise tells her what has happened, and her mother finds the older student and reprimands her strongly. After this, Praise gains confidence and says that she doesn’t allow anyone to oppress her any more. She is now going to university to study law.
The process for making this story
Praise told her story through a group workshop with other young people in Nigeria. At the start of the process, Praise felt very overwhelmed by the emotions she wanted to express in her story. As she developed her story over the course of five days, she gradually became more confident in how she was expressing herself and less overwhelmed by the emotions. For Praise, choosing animals to represent the characters really helped her to think through how and what she wanted to convey. Praise was also very interested in the process of editing and digitally producing the story, and she put a lot of effort into that aspect of her story development.
Since this story was made:
This story was shared alongside stories by Nigerian teachers at an event with education stakeholders in Benin City. Praise’s story highlighted to the group the importance of bullying in education, which is an issue that has not received significant attention in policy terms in Nigeria.
Life Just Changes
Storytellers:
Olivia
This story was made in a workshop in Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe in May 2022. The process used was individual storytelling. Facilitation/process design by Alison Buckler, Faith Mkwananzi, Tafadzwa Mhou, and Liz Chamberlain. Joanna Wheeler was an advisor.
This research was carried out through a collaboration between The Open University, UK, Plan International, UK, and Plan Zimbabwe. It was part of a project funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) through the Girls’ Education Challenge (a UKAID-funded initiative).
Short summary
Olivia’s story is about a journey to visit her sister. She wakes up one morning feeling bleak. Her relationship has broken down, and she and her child have been forced to move away from her partner’s village. This also meant losing access to the education programme she was enrolled in, and which she loved. She is finding work where she can but only earning enough to eat one meal a day. She’s mainly very lonely. She hasn’t seen her sister for over a year but feels a sudden urge to make the long bus journey to be with her.
She spends the day with her sister and feels so much better just having talked to someone about her problems. As she is leaving, her sister hands her US$150 and tells her to do something good with it. Danai is overwhelmed but determined not to waste the opportunity. She does lots of research into how to invest this money and eventually decides to buy some clothes for resale. She realises she has a knack for business. After a few months, she has her own permanent market stall and is known in her area as the person to buy good clothes from.
Danai’s story aims to communicate the dynamic nature of poverty. This is a continuation of the message she shared through the other stories she created for the project: she wanted to emphasise that her life has not been static, or consistently poor. There have been multiple periods in her life where she has had money, food, and security. She also wanted to emphasise through the story that even though she did not complete the education programme, she credits the skills and confidence she gained from the time she spent on it as being essential to her present success.
The process for making this story
Olivia’s story was developed at a workshop at the end of a three-year longitudinal project with adolescent girls who had missed out on a significant amount of formal schooling. The study engaged with the adolescent girls at multiple points over the project to explore their changing aspirations and their attempts to pursue them. During the research, some of the adolescent girls, including Olivia, enrolled in an alternative education programme, SAGE (Supporting Adolescent Girls’ Education), led by Plan International.
In the first workshop, held before the adolescent girls had heard of SAGE, they were asked to tell a story about an event or moment in their lives that changed what they thought was possible in their future. In the final workshop, where this story was created, they were given the same prompt but asked to focus on an event or moment from the previous three years.
Since this story was made:
Olivia’s story has been shared at events with Plan International, at research showcase events at The Open University, and at various storytelling workshops and seminars in the UK and Zimbabwe.
What the storytellers say about it:
“Through the storytelling process, I have learned that sometimes life can be tough, but things can change when you least expect it. Sometimes sharing your problem with others is the saving grace you need, and helps you to see things from different angles.”
Storytelling workshop participant, Zimbabwe
“My favourite activity was the drama! I loved it so much because the group helped me to see a vision of my story, and how things are going to unfold for me. I learnt through the drama that my story can have a happy ending.”
Storytelling workshop participant, Zimbabwe
“I really feel that the knowledge I am gaining from these workshops will change my life when I get home. The workshops are teaching me critical thinking and the importance of having a different way of looking at things. For example, I took a lesson from someone who managed to start working, using their own hands. When I got the money from my sister, I also decided to start my own business because I learned from someone here that it was possible.”
Storytelling workshop participant, Zimbabwe