Story Circles

Summary

Modeled after traditional storytelling gatherings, Story Circles allow people in a town to come together to share experiences and stories. This process can help communities explore and identify unifying values, which can inform the planning process.

Tool Description

Story Circles help citizens to listen to one another, identify common ground, and share stories about what matters to them and their community. While Story Circles have not been used extensively in community planning, they can be a great tool for helping communities identify common values that can shape the planning process. This exercise of bringing together different groups to share and listen to each other builds trust within the community, enabling cohesive community planning in the long run. By identifying common ground and shared values in a comfortable, welcoming setting, people begin to see how collective action can shape the future of their town.

The Orton Family Foundation’s Heart & Soul Community Planning Handbook provides descriptions of the different ways Story Circles can be used in a planning process in their Quick Guide to Story Circles. They outline several scenarios: a “simple” circle where groups share stories in a seated setting, a “walking story circle” where groups follow a predetermined tour, sharing stories at each location, and several variations on both. The key components of any Story Circle include:

A group of 6-8 to facilitate good conversation in an intimate setting.
A comfortable, neutral location where all participants feel welcome.
Food such as cookies, coffee, or comfort foods to bring people together.
Careful thought into who is invited and how. Do you issue personal invitations or post flyers?
Exercises, topics, and questions that invite stories with emotion and connection to place. These could include pre-prepared stories with objects or pictures, visual exercises like mapping projects or drawings, or envisioning projects that look towards the future.
A method of distilling and presenting the values that arise through the stories and conversations so that everyone can see the main points.
Sharing these common values and making sure that important ones are integrated into the planning process.

Skills needed

Facilitator

Summary of Costs

Depending on the format, Story Circles can be done with almost no budget or materials or can include a more elaborate setup.

Strengths

  • Story Circles are an inclusive and comfortable way to discover common values in a community. Everyone can share stories that connect them to their town no matter their age, job, education, or how long they’ve lived there.
  • Story Circles can include as little or as much technology as desired and can be run in many different types of space, with a variety of materials.
  • Story Cirlces are relatively easy to organize and are a fairly inexpensive way to explore a town’s character.
  • By touching on the emotional and personal connections people have to their town, values may arise that would not come up in other, more formal, settings like planning board meetings or design charrettes. This allows people to explore values on a more intimate, non-threatening level.
  • Sharing and listening at Story Circles helps build trust and relationships in a community.
  • Story circles can be used at many different points in the planning process and for different purposes. They can be tailored to a specific place or issue or used to broadly investigate community values and character.

Limitations

  • Story Circles can typically engage only a limited number of people, since they rely on people showing up at an event. This requires the facilitator to think carefully about who is invited and how, and other engagement methods should be used to reach additional people.
  • Depending on the planning process, it could be challenging to integrate the values distilled during the Story Circle into future town plans.
  • Overall, Story Circles require a good amount of planning and organization to make sure they run smoothly, include everyone, and arrive at a set of communal values.
  • Story Circles can take a wrong turn if group members try to comment on or judge other people’s stories in inappropriate ways. A facilitator in each group can help, and clear ground rules are important.

Applications

  • Asset mapping
  • Data analysis and collection
  • Dialogue
  • Engagement and outreach
  • Storytelling
  • Values identification
  • Visioning
Submitted By: h.orcutt
Last Updated: August 24, 2011, 1:08 pm

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.