Finding your storytellers

Rolling the snowball

Here are two tried and tested approaches to finding storytellers:

Start by talking to someone – anyone – that has a stake in your heritage area.

If you’re telling the story of a place, talk to someone who has lived there a long time. If you’re telling the story of a social movement, talk to someone that was involved and remembers it.

From here, your storytellers will ‘snowball’. At the end of each interview (link to:/conducting interviews), ask your storyteller who else you should be talking to. Now follow the thread.

Run a group storytelling activity. (link to:/group storytelling)

Show, don’t tell

Memory is slippery. Don’t worry if the stories you hear are different from the ‘facts’ you’ve read about. Sometimes, the gaps between memory and fact are the most interesting parts of the story. By presenting people’s memories alongside other stories, research, and archival material, you’re raising questions is the viewer’s mind, and inviting them to think critically about what they’re seeing.

Look for counterpoints

When you come to showcasing, you might want to present stories that talk about the same thing from different perspectives, alongside each other (link to:/bringing it all together). Counterpoints and tensions make great stories. When you hear something that you think someone else might feel differently about, try to find that someone, and talk to them too.

Gather Evidence

Collect archival material as you go. Storytellers have something to tell, but they may also have old photos, objects and memorabilia that will help to supplement and enrich their story when you come to showcasing it.