Storytelling, story-retelling, storyknowing: towards a participatory practice of storytelling

Abstract

This paper presents a practice-led research project that investigates how people from diverse community and school groups understand and respond to oral storytelling. Run in collaboration with York Theatre Royal, the project uses art form workshops (drama, music, fine art) to actively invite participants to make the transition from listeners to storytellers. This paper places these workshops within a theoretical framework that draws upon understandings of storytelling developed by Benjamin, Bruner, Kearney and Wilson. We argue (1) that through the process of (re)telling participants demonstrate a particular kind of embedded knowledge that we have termed ‘storyknowing’ and (2) that inhabiting a story in this open-ended way has intrinsic value. We present a typology of strategies for retelling adopted by the participants and reflect on our development of a participatory practice of storytelling.