Transforming Stories, Driving Change
Transforming Stories, Driving Change
Transforming Stories, Driving Change is a research and performance initiative designed to collectivize and mobilize the power of experience-based stories. Through our plays, we aimed to contribute to building the movements that can make public leaders more accountable to people who are affected by their decisions.
The project was rooted in an understanding of the significance of fiction in social change processes and a recognition of common troubles with the telling and reception of ‘stories of experience’ in public settings.
Transforming Stories, Driving Change facilitators worked alongside community partners to make plays designed to draw attention to the voices and visions of people whose opinions are not often represented in discussions of the future of Hamilton.
Self-advocates, educators, social service workers and artists came together to make theatre about living in inhospitable and precarious housing (When My Home is Your Business), dealing with the narrow mandates and inflexibility of social services (We Need to Talk!), and navigating life as a young person under surveillance and threat (Choose Your Destination).
The plays were performed to community audiences, at conferences, and to university students, and each performance was followed by facilitated post-performance activities.
How can you use this research?
The performance creation approach developed by the Transforming Stories, Driving Change team is described in an online workbook. This workbook is written for socially engaged theatre practitioners and artists, community and self-advocates, social service providers and policy makers, arts and social science educators and students.
It offers guidance and encouragement for anyone interested in collaborating on a project that uses community-based theatre as a creative platform for working alongside the people whose voices and visions are essential to, and mostly absent from, public direction-setting for the cities we live in.
Researcher
Christina Sinding
PhD
Professor, Social Work
Professor, Health, Aging & Society
Member, Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging, Faculty of Social Sciences
Citation
Sinding, C., Graham, C., Nouvet, E., & Vengris, J. (2016). Personal stories, public voices: Performance for public-making. InTensions, Fall/ Winter (8).