SHAPING WORDS, NARRATING SHAPES

 

For:  A Symposium on Storymaking, by the Liverpool Screen School in collaboration with the ICC (Institute of Cultural Capital) and supported by the MeCCSA Practice Network. November 11th 2016, at Liverpool John Moore's University.

​

   Abstract:

​

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it is the other way around. Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power."

(Pratchett)

​

When stories become identity, their words assume a different shape to that of marks on an otherwise blank page. Communities and individuals lay claim to, or are claimed by, myths of place and space; they are worn as cultural narratives that unify and distinguish one from the other. Re- presenting such stories to those who have assumed ownership can be contentious. Collaborations between academic and non academic partners reveal the spaces between

knowledge and belief, where politics resides in an ethical guise. 

This paper explores the challenges of facilitating participatory culture in narrative projects, as platformed by tourism and heritage. The case studies cone from a long running deep mapping project in Ceredigion, which, in part, has aimed to connect both visitors and locals to the land they are walking upon. Giving equal voice to disparate perspectives through creative collaboration requires an awareness of the many shapes that stories can form.

Working with, rather than for, an audience can also dissolve the boundaries which commonly separate these expressions, merging the performer with the performed, when the author becomes the reader and the story telling becomes a shared experience. 

​

Barthes, Roland (1977) Heath, Simon (transl). Image, Music, Text. London: Montana Press.

Pratchett, Terry (1992). Witches Abroad. London: Corgi, p8.