Today we are joined by Amy Hill, Yakuta Poonawalla, and Cassidy Villeneuve, creators, and facilitators of a new workshop experience at StoryCenter, the founders of the digital storytelling movement. I met Amy, Yakuta, and Cassidy while a student in the pilot of the Earth Stories workshop. This workshop focuses on the personal connections individuals have with the natural world. In this conversation, Amy, Yakuta, Cassidy, and I talk about how this workshop was created, how digital storytelling can change peoples’ minds, and so much more. See show notes at Talaterra.com for links and guest profiles.
Today we are joined by Amy Hill, Yakuta Poonawalla, and Cassidy Villeneuve, creators, and facilitators of a new workshop experience at StoryCenter, the founders of the digital storytelling movement. I met Amy, Yakuta, and Cassidy while a student in the pilot of the Earth Stories workshop. This workshop focuses on the personal connections individuals have with the natural world.
In this conversation, Amy, Yakuta, Cassidy, and I talk about how this workshop was created, how digital storytelling can change peoples’ minds, and so much more.
LINKS
View films from Earth Stories pilot
GUEST PROFILES
Amy Hill, StoryCenter
Amy is director of Silence Speaks, an initiative that works to bring personal stories into education and advocacy environments around women's rights and human rights. Amy also coordinates a lot of StoryCenter's social justice and environmental justice work.
Yakuta Poonawalla, Earth Stories Facilitator
Yakuta works at Golden Gate Parks Conservancy in San Francisco, CA, and feels extremely lucky and privileged to tell stories of the natural world and find ways to connect Bay Area communities to the natural world and parks in San Mateo and Marin counties.
Cassidy Villeneuve, Earth Stories Facilitator
Cassidy works at Frog Hollow Farm, a regenerative organic farm in California, and is interested in connecting experts, scientists, farmers, and individuals with expertise in climate solutions, to a broader audience through storytelling.
Tania Marien:
Welcome to Talaterra, a podcast about freelance educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. Who are these educators? What do they do? Join me and let's find out together. This is your host, Tania Marien.
Tania Marien:
Hello. Today, we are joined by Amy Hill, Yakuta Poonawalla, and Cassidy Villeneuve, creators, and facilitators of a new workshop experience at StoryCenter, the founders of the Digital Storytelling Movement.
Tania Marien:
I met Amy, Yakuta, and Cassidy while I was a student in the pilot of the Earth Stories workshop. This workshop focuses on each participant's personal connections with the natural world. In the conversation you're about to hear, Amy, Yakuta, Cassidy, and I talk about how this workshop was created, how digital storytelling can change people's minds, and so much more. Let's join the conversation. You will hear from Amy Hill first.
Amy Hill:
So, I've been working with StoryCenter for almost 20 years now and my primary area of focus has really been on looking at storytelling as a way to address gender-based violence and women's rights and human rights issues. But I've really long had a relationship and interest in environmental issues and environmental justice, and we've done small bits of that work along the way, and I've always just had an interest in integrating some of the social justice and human rights work that we do together with work on storytelling that looks at our relationships to the natural world and to the earth.
Amy Hill:
And I think for me, part of it is just because of my own life experiences of connecting really deeply with the natural world and with nature and finding that those are times... the times when I felt the most deeply connected to myself and to the world and to the universe has really been times when I've been in nature, walking on a beach, or climbing a mountain, like that. And just in thinking about the degradation, and just watching things play out over the years, from ocean acidification to the increasing awareness and impact of climate change, and all of that, I've really thought a lot about what will it take for individuals to feel that they have a role to play and to feel that caring about the environment and caring about the impacts of climate change is something that they really can feel and take on.
Amy Hill:
And the premise behind a lot of our storytelling work is that when people share stories from their own life experience, they're able to connect with their own vulnerability in a way that provides them with an experience of grounding and strength if you will. So, it's not this idea that, oh, by sharing significant or potentially difficult life experiences, that you're going to be somehow traumatized or weakened by that, it's the idea that by sharing your truth, you come into contact with your own vulnerability, and that that is a place of tenderness and depth inside of you that is deeply, deeply grounding. It's like stripping away the pretense and the everydayness of the performance of who we think we are and just getting to the core of who we are as humans.
Amy Hill:
And so just in thinking about this in connection to supporting people in caring about the planet and caring about climate change, the idea is that by connecting people with their own stories of what it has meant to them to be a person living on the earth, connecting with the natural world, that that can give rise to a greater degree of concern, attentiveness, and heartfelt willingness to get involved in taking action or speaking out, or just being more aware about the environmental issues. But that's the gist of the... I don't know... philosophical piece, at least for me.
Amy Hill:
And then just in terms of the practicals... I think I shared this with Yakuta... but I find that often with issues of human rights or social justice, there's this balkanization of issues. Either people are addressing gender-based violence, or they're addressing this particular issue of a conflict zone in war, or they're over here addressing these issues of maybe environmental destruction, and there's not a lot of efforts that are interconnected with taking a more holistic perspective of how those things weave together.
Amy Hill:
I did a lot of work in South Africa years ago, and I just remember driving out into Eastern Cape province with a colleague who had been very active in the anti-apartheid movement and was now doing a lot of work around gender-based violence there, and he just rolled down the window of the car and just threw this bag of fast food trash out the car window. And it was just this moment of total shock for me of realizing, "Wow, people can care deeply about one set of issues and be completely cut off from another piece that is so important." Like, if you care about your place, and you care about the conditions of people there, you have to also care about the land and the natural world. And that was just a wake-up call.
Amy Hill:
And then the other piece that was really the big wake-up call for... I had been thinking for years about wanting to do storytelling focused on environmental justice, and then finally, in the fall of 2016, it just became that much more urgent. And after Trump was elected, I actually made a little story called "Tides" about a time when I went with my family out to some tide pools and just experienced this profound grief over how much things had changed and really thought a lot about what we were doing to the natural world, and I thought, "Well, how can I link this to something bigger, especially in this era when..." It was like I could just see it all, I could just see what was going to go down. And of course, as we all know, it did go down. Lots of really horrific things happened during those four years in terms of just chipping away and hacking away at all kinds of environmental protections.
Amy Hill:
So, then, fast forward four years later, and these things take time, but finally, I had some colleagues who expressed similar interest. So, Yakuta, who I had met through a separate piece of work with another organization doing some gender-based violence work, and I had heard her talk so eloquently about her own experience of what connecting with nature and the environment and the natural world meant for her, really as a... Yakuta, you talked about it as a form of deep, deep healing, and nurturing, and like a balm, yeah, just a healing from some of the earlier trauma that you had gone through. And when I heard you talk about that I knew I really want to work with her on this because she gets it in a really profound way.
Amy Hill:
And then with Cassidy, Cassidy is somebody who we had worked with at StoryCenter a few years ago as an intern, and I knew she was interested in these issues, and she just happened to reach back out to me last fall when some of this was coming together.
Amy Hill:
I'll just say one more quick thing and then I'll stop because this is a lot and you can't possibly fit all this in. But interestingly, I think that just as it did for many people, the pandemic provided a little bit of a push for me on this. So, we saw and witnessed so many people doing such incredibly beautiful creative work during the pandemic that seemed like this just outpouring of need to express oneself creatively, and I think some of that was operating too. I just thought if we can't try to put something for this together now, when will I? And I just decided to move ahead, because some of the concerns had been, "Well, how is this going to get funded? Who's going to pay for it? Do we need to have a grant?" And I just decided, "Well, let me just reach out to some of our colleagues and former workshop participants and see if we can pull together a group of people that would be interested in just doing it anyway without having dedicated funding." And so that's how the workshop came together.
Tania Marien:
Yakuta, how did you become involved with the Earth Stories project?
Yakuta Poonawalla:
Thanks, Tania, for that question. I feel that my heart just led me in that direction. When Amy had mentioned this idea to me, I felt like I live my life in many different stories from the time I wake up and till it's time to go to bed, and I work with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy doing habitat restoration work and landscape scale stewardship work here in San Francisco, and I'm always thinking about what stories I can tell about the natural world or the people I work with, the communities that I work with so that we can all come together in appreciation and love for the natural world and also appreciation and love for each other. And when Amy shared this idea, it was so natural, it just had to happen. And I just feel truly grateful to Amy for bringing us together and for creating the space and this platform for us to come together and open our hearts in this way through storytelling.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
In my work, in my job here in the Parks Conservancy, were always telling stories, and especially right now thinking about how the parks and the natural world can be the space where we can heal together and talk about the issues that our communities face, talk about climate change, talk about social justice. All this came together in this workshop where our focus wasn't just that one transformative moment that you had, that one aha moment of like, "I loved that mountain as soon as I saw it," or, "I fell in love with the river," but it went beyond that, it went beyond that transformative moment. Okay, I fell in love with this mountain and this river, but did my communities have access to it? What was it doing to my communities? Does everyone around me have access to it? Does everyone around me have access to that transformative moment? And when we started asking these questions, we realized how there was so much to take into the issues of social justice, the issues of access. Who has the privilege of nature and the outdoors?
Yakuta Poonawalla:
And so when we started talking about this in our planning sessions, it was very, very clear that we had to bring people together during this time, and that's what really brought me into this. I do it in the park setting, and to then challenge myself to do it with Amy and Cassidy in an online setting, it was definitely intimidating, but we all came together and did it and I'm just so grateful for that opportunity.
Tania Marien:
Cassidy, how did you become involved with Earth Stories?
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I began my relationship with StoryCenter I think six years ago now, something like that. I began as an intern and went through their facilitation training, their facilitators' training as part of a research project that I was doing at the time. It was researching these sorts of spaces where people are invited to tell stories about their lives and what effect that has on them, or when they share these stories with others in their communities, whether it's healthcare, or environmental work, or as a teacher, what effect does that have on the listener. And I think about six months before Stories began and we had everyone in the same room, I reached back out to Amy with a just personal curiosity about what StoryCenter was up to and if they had any programming around bringing in climate scientists or folks who work in environmentalism, folks who work in climate solutions, whatever it may be, to just have the space to tell their experiences about their work, why they got into it, and have that basic community, but also as a way to invite larger audiences to understand what this work is like.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I have a personal curiosity in science communication as this huge field where there's so many forms that it can take, where scientists are talking about what they do and why it matters, but I thought that story was something I was seeing other leaders in science communication say would be something that's so powerful. There have been studies too about what makes a speaker seem credible in the eyes of an audience, and it very much has to do with sharing some sort of lived experience, warmth, relating to the audience in a way beyond expertise, and I just thought that this was an amazing way to link those things.
Tania Marien:
Earth Stories Workshop, who was it for in the beginning? Who was it for first? Who did you want to see themselves in this workshop?
Amy Hill:
Well, I think in conceiving of the project, it seemed like it would be useful and important to bring together an initial pilot group of people who were already at least doing some work in the field of environmental justice, social justice, climate justice types of environments. And so, with the thinking being that after doing an initial digital storytelling session with that group, that then we could build from there to reach out further to their constituents or reach out further to the communities that they work with, and that kind of thing.
Amy Hill:
So, really, I just went through the lists that we have of colleagues and current and former partners and folks who've joined our informational webinars and hand-picked a larger list of individuals from various organizations like that and reached out to them. And then, fortunately, we got some wonderful responses. I reached out to specific people who I knew and had worked with and I asked my colleagues at StoryCenter to think along those lines. And an important piece for us was making sure that the group was diverse in terms of representation. So, we really were aware of not wanting to replicate the great white hope idea of some of the traditional environmental protection organizations and just recognizing that historically, that field has been dominated, to a large extent, especially by White males. And of course, a lot of great work has been done, but we really wanted to start from a place of inclusion and engagement with a lot of different communities and bringing in multiple perspectives, particularly the interlinked social justice perspective.
Amy Hill:
And then as you know, since you were in the workshop, for some reason, we did end up with all women. And so we decided, "Well, let's go with that and let's have at least this first session be a women's group," and it was quite lovely to have it work out that way.
Tania Marien:
In your experience with working with so many storytellers over the years, how have you seen digital storytelling change people's minds? What elements in a story prompt people to reconsider their position on a subject or assess the rules they live by, in particular, the rules that no longer serve them? What is it about the final product that changes people?
Amy Hill:
That's such a complicated question. I mean, I would say that I think when we think about digital storytelling and research related to digital storytelling and the interest in looking at what impact does this have, which, of course, is a key question that lots of supporters and funders will always ask, we tend to think about it from the perspective of, what is the impact on the storyteller, so the person actually sharing and crafting and producing the digital story, and then what is the impact on those who watch or view the digital story? So, I think it's important to keep those two audiences in mind.
Amy Hill:
Of course, it's much easier to look at what is the impact on the storyteller, because you have small groups of people that have been through this process, and across the board, it's been very clear that, as you said yourself, that the experience of making a digital story can be really transformative for people in terms of helping them reflect deeply on their life experience and take away new insights and learnings and meanings, helping them build significant relationships with their cohort of participants, and the workshop can function as that community building and solidarity building environment, which we've definitely seen with our Earth Stories pilot, with the fact that we're continuing to meet, and hopefully, that will keep going.
Amy Hill:
And we have a number of evaluations and small studies that have been published that look at the impacts on storytellers. When it comes to how the stories themselves can make a difference in changing people's minds, that gets much more complicated and challenging to measure. I think amongst people in the world of media studies, viewer response research is notoriously difficult because it's quite challenging to pull out what is related to watching a video and all these other variables and factors that happen for people's lives. But certainly, what we have seen from our own experience of community-based work in projects is that the stories do tend to have a really profound impact on viewers and some of the things that we've taken from colleagues that do work in the advocacy realm is thinking about what kinds of stories can really prompt that kind of learning and reflection and change.
Amy Hill:
And there's some great work from this organization called Frameworks Institute that's based on the research of this sociologist at Stanford, Iyengar, I think is his name, and it all has to do with looking at the ways that stories are framed with the thinking being that, if a story is framed as a... He talks about episodic framing and thematic framing. So, for instance, episodic framing would be, "This is my personal story, it originates completely with me, and it's only about my experience," right? So, it's very much focused on the individual episode. And then the thematic framing is widening out the lens and looking specifically at, well, how does that story also connect to a broader community, to the broader society, and to the world?
Amy Hill:
And so, whether we integrate that kind of teaching directly into the digital storytelling process or whether people just intuitively know that they want to make those kinds of connections, we have seen that when people blend that episodic and thematic framing and connect their own individual stories to the bigger picture, that that can have a bigger impact. And then the other piece, of course, is that for me, digital storytelling is really a form of popular education. So, I don't know if you're familiar with all the work of Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educator who really put forward this idea that in order for people to get involved in efforts to create change in their communities, they need to be supported in connecting the dots between their own individual experience and the larger structures and forces and cultural factors in which their experience unfolds. So, as much as we can paint that picture too, that can make a difference.
Amy Hill:
And that was a long-winded way of saying that, basically, nobody knows. Nobody will fund the research. I mean, I've been doing this work for 20 years and nobody has yet adequately funded significant evaluative research that looks at impacts because people don't want to fund it.
Tania Marien:
What might that research look like?
Amy Hill:
Well, I think that you could conceivably design a study that would, say, really try to measure the impact on people's knowledge, and attitudes, and reported prospective behaviors. I think that if I were designing a research study, I wouldn't do it alone, because I'm not a researcher, obviously, but I think you could design something that would really set up a series of screenings, whether they would be in person or online, and then would do some research with the people who attended those screenings to look at their reported increase in knowledge, look at shifts in attitudes maybe before and after a screening, and then look at their intended behaviors. Like, "As a result of this screening, are you more likely to support local efforts for climate change mitigation, or climate justice, environmental justice, that kind of thing?" I don't think it would be impossible.
Tania Marien:
Yakuta, I feel like you've been wanting to say something.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
It's just so wonderful to hear both of you. And, Amy, what you were sharing reminded me of how I think about storytelling and when we are storytelling for the natural world, on behalf of the natural world, right? I'm always asking myself, "Well, how would the tree describe this experience, or how would the tree speak for herself, or how would the river speak for herself, or how would this beautiful flower speak for herself?" And it's hard, right? And then I get into this poetic mindset of bringing in words that we're talking about right now and using, like compassion, and empathy, and respect. But in a human-to-human conversation, those words become so much harder to understand. And so, that was a thought that came to my mind right now, like, when we think about impact and how does storytelling impact each one of us and the people who were in the workshop, and then how does it impact the natural world, and how does the natural think about that?
Yakuta Poonawalla:
And then the other thought that I also had was, when I'm thinking about impact, like, who is telling the story, and whose story is being told by whom? Right? And I think that's a big one because when we're thinking about telling the story of a community, say, representing a Black, Indigenous or people of color community, a leader from that community, them telling the story of their community is very different from someone coming from the outside and telling the story, and then the impact that it would have on that community is also different. And so, that first person experience of telling the story from leaders who are within that community makes such a huge difference.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
And then also, what stories have been told over the years? Have we questioned and challenged them? And then what stories do we really need to create a space for right now to truly understand the challenges of climate change, and social justice, and racial and environmental justice? And are we really spending enough time and resources and capacity in creating those spaces or are we just telling the same stories over and over again, which are taking up a lot of space, but have we learned anything new? Have our hearts and minds opened to something new? And so, those were two thoughts that came up for me as I was listening to you, Amy.
Amy Hill:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, with that research question, I come from a public health background, so what I shared was oriented along those lines, from that public health background. I used to care a lot and be very interested in those questions. I'm not anymore because I believe that, to some extent, if you fixate on impacts and hold on to this notion that you will or won't have this or that particular impact, you're losing the spontaneity and you're losing the organic quality of the ripples of feeling and connection that can just naturally occur when people view these things.
Amy Hill:
It's just like what you said, Yakuta like, we can create these spaces for people to come in, connect with each other, connect with themselves, and share stories, and then we just have to open ourselves up to trusting that those stories will then... with our support and with everyone's support... go out into the world and make a difference. And maybe that sounds too mushy or not serious-minded enough, but I just feel that getting too zeroed in on, "Well, we must have this or that particular impact," somehow takes away from all the other potential impacts that you might have.
Tania Marien:
You mentioned ripples, Amy, and the ripples of impact. The Earth Stories Workshop and that setting really creates room for people to articulate thoughts or stories that have long been unspoken, or silenced, or maybe not even thought of in a way that they could be a story. What struck me about the workshop is that... and earlier you mentioned frameworks and formats. You could easily have assigned us different formats, episodic, and all these different things, but instead, everybody had space to stumble around and put their own words together, and then the stories came out as they came out. Telling a story, whatever the medium, written, podcast, or in movie format, in a film type format, is not easy and it's difficult. I was wondering, what are some of the challenges that you observed, and not only just at this workshop, but in other workshops? When people start to feel around for the story that they have to tell, what is a common challenge for them?
Amy Hill:
Well, I think one of the most common challenges that I've seen is even getting people to the place where they believe that their story really matters. In this very basic elemental way, as Yakuta said, there's a lot of existing strong voices and narratives out there, and we do live in a culture, particularly a media culture, that the squeaky wheel gets the oil as they say, right? There's a lot of narcissistic posturing on social media that garners a lot of attention. And I think in our workshops, because we typically work with community members who don't necessarily have a lot of experience with speaking up and sharing stories from their own unique perspectives, there can be a place of, "Does my voice really make a difference, and do I even have something that is of value to contribute and to say?"
Amy Hill:
And I think both Cassidy and Yakuta can speak to how we support people in working through that, but the biggest piece is just the group process piece that's the heart of digital storytelling, which is creating a safe container and a safe environment where people can come forward with what they have to say.
Tania Marien:
Cassidy.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
Yeah. Something that struck me early on was just the emphasis on that each story got to be owned and felt and told by the storyteller. And I think in this context of... I come from more of a science communication background where scientists are asked to share their expertise about these huge world issues that affects so many people on a very personal level in this way that might not bring in any personal experience. In this space, it was much more about, "Well, how do you bring out that personal experience as a way to talk about a collective problem, but in a way that you have total control over how that's pulled and where it goes?" Because something we talked about really early on was, "Oh, it would be so exciting to share these with as wide an audience as possible," because if you're thinking about it from a science communication standpoint, how better to invite people to care about environmental issues facing the world, facing the communities, then by hearing real experiences of why we do the work we do, why we feel connected to land, and nature, and natural spaces.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
But I really appreciated from both Yakuta and Amy early on as saying, the storyteller gets to decide where the story will be told and how it lives and how it moves beyond the space, and it's really about that individually.
Tania Marien:
How do you feel the Earth Stories workshop went for yourself and for the participants and the overall intention of the workshop?
Yakuta Poonawalla:
I, at a personal level, I feel nourished, and renewed, and healed, and it was a space that was just so needed. It reminded me of my mother a lot, and I was thinking about how my mother back in India... that's where I grew up... my mother, for years, more than 20 years, she's had a group of women friends that she calls... [Sahil 00:36:49] is the word. Sahil means friends in my mother tongue, Gujarati. And every month, they get together in one of their homes and there's always sharing of food, and everyone's a really good cook, and then they spend the rest of the afternoon just hanging out chatting, sharing their challenges, some tips on something that they figured out at home or outside of their home environment.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
And this space that we created reminded me of my mother because she would come back from those gatherings and meetings and there would be a huge smile on her face as if 100 kilos were just lifted off her body and her shoulders, just felt like calm and relaxed. And you just knew that she had come back from meeting her Sahil. And I felt that way after every session that we had. And even though it was towards the end of the day, and we all had come back from work, and all the other commitments, life commitments, we would enter that space and it felt like the secret space that I was entering and I was in the company of other women with shared values, and shared understanding, and shared challenges. And then when I left that space, I would feel lighter, and I would leave feeling, "I just hope every single participant in there felt the same way, and I hope so."
Yakuta Poonawalla:
But I think that was the magic of that space, and that is always the magic of spaces where women come together and turn to one another in times of crisis, in challenging times. So, I'll share that and I'll pause so that Cassidy has some time to share too.
Tania Marien:
Okay. Cassidy.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I love that so much. I felt the same way, that same sense of renewal and just relief. And I think so many of those gathering spaces, obviously, we haven't been able to be a part of this year in the same way, and Zoom presents its own barriers to feeling connected, but it was such a welcome space. But I think it gets back to what you're saying, Tania, about how do we create that space, and I think there's only so much that facilitators can do in setting the tone or in setting agreements, that it really is up to the members of the space to bring a generosity of spirit and tell the truth about their stories, share deeply personal things and really be able to listen and hold space for each other. And I think that that agreement was really honored and grew in this way that I wasn't necessarily expecting, but that everyone came and showed up with such an eagerness to gather in that way, in like your mother with her friends and bringing themselves.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
And something I've been thinking about is how often are we given that opportunity and asked to share like that? The lucky among us might have that relationship with close friends, but even then, so much has been going on, everyone is running around with their busy lives. Just the permission to hold the floor, uninterrupted, with people who are there fully to listen to you, it floors me every single time... I mean, I have chills thinking about it... and it came across virtually. And I've never had a workshop experience through StoryCenter that has been virtual. I've been in quite a number in-person and I still felt that connection and that really happily surprised me. I think I had faith in the space that it would be meaningful and wonderful to connect, but it really came through.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Thank you, Cassidy. Amy. Oh, Yakuta. Go ahead, Yakuta.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
Cassidy mentioned that it's not just the facilitators, it's also the participants, and I strongly agree with Cassidy. I think it was everyone bringing elements of what I shared, right, like elements of healing, and respect for each other, and love for the earth, but also, we've never met in person, so many of us have never met, and we were still able to share some of our deepest darkest fears and challenges and experiences. And I think that happened because of that understanding that you and I have come into this space to listen to each other, to respect each other. And like silence, I feel like listening is such an endangered species these days that we intentionally created time for that and space for that.
Yakuta Poonawalla:
And there were all these other elements, right? Like we talked about how we just didn't want to show slide PowerPoint presentation of what are the tools to create a storytelling workshop. There was a land acknowledgement to center indigenous wisdom and the connection with the earth, there was poetry, there was music. We learned so much about each other outside of our stories that we were going to share. So, I think all those elements together really created that magical space.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I think there are even ways we were able to replicate the embodied experience of being together, I mean, not fully, but just in the poetry, in reading together, with everyone muted and able to read along or sing along, which was so lovely, or breathing as a way to close quite a many minutes long virtual space where we're all focused in on our screen and then go back to our life raw, having shared very deep intimate things and an experience, and how do you bring it back into the body after being just in totally a virtual experience, breathing together, or stretches, or whatever it is. But I think there were ways that we could intentionally think about creating, at least, the environment for... I don't know... like a nurturing environment, and then ways that the people involved really brought themselves and created that for each other.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Without really any prompting, really, I mean, it wasn't really a written understanding or anything how things were going to go in that sense, people brought that with them and gifted that to each other with... generous in that way. Yeah. And Cassidy, you mentioned that you've never experienced an online StoryCenter workshop. I've only experienced online StoryCenter workshops, because the one I did way back when was also online, because I though, "How am I going to get the Berkeley?" It's hard to get to Berkeley. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good point, that all this is possible online in this type of a setting. Amy.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
Yeah. And I think that speaks to the willingness... Oh, sorry, Amy.
Amy Hill:
No, go ahead.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I think that even though it's virtual, whether it's in-person or virtual, I think there's always this willingness from participants of going to that place. And I think our group was a special group, I have no doubt, but every workshop is unique in who's involved, but also across all workshops I've been a part of, there's always been a moment at the end where everyone shares their stories and thoughts. The authenticity is so clear and I think is felt on the primal human level that I think we're all craving, in a certain sense. So, whether we're in a virtual space or not, when you self select to be a part of this group, it feels automatic to me that that comes through in a real way.
Tania Marien:
Yes, yeah. Well said, well said. Amy, about the question about how you felt the workshop went and how you see it growing or continuing in the future.
Amy Hill:
About the workshop and how it went, I couldn't be more ecstatic. It was just a phenomenal experience. It was more than I ever imagined that it could be, and like Yakuta and Cassidy said, I think so much of that had to do with the fact that the storytellers who joined and participated somehow felt really drawn to our call for participation and just fully opted in. Because there wasn't a lot of teaching about story, there wasn't even a lot of teaching about, "Well, how do I integrate these disparate parts of my experiences," but somehow, for each person, they were able to pull out these incredible stories that blended and linked different issues from these deeply, deeply personal perspectives and places. So, the experience was lovely, the connections were lovely, and the stories just blew me away with their beauty, and their directness, and just how touching they are.
Amy Hill:
And in terms of moving forward, we would love to see more of these workshops happen. We're actively looking for support, and funding, and partners, and I will hope that we can rely on our core group of pilot storytellers to help provide advisory, guidance, and help steer the ship in terms of how things evolve, and would just really love to see this effort grow.
Amy Hill:
I did want to just say one more quick thing about the methodology, though, because you mentioned, Tania, that you've been in other workshops, and Cassidy has helped facilitate a number of workshops with us when she was working with us a couple of years ago. And going into the planning of this, Yakuta, and Cassidy, and I really felt that we didn't want to just take the cookie-cutter model of digital storytelling as it usually rolls out at StoryCenter, we wanted to bring some different pieces in.
Amy Hill:
So, Yakuta mentioned the poetry, and the land acknowledgments, and this and that, but even getting to the activities where we were guiding people through processes of thinking about images, and sound, and specific stories, we did design some unique activities there that put people together, and partners, and we had you all do the walking tour on your own time to listen and capture sound and images. I wasn't a participant, but I do feel like those activities added a richness to the stories and that also the slowing down of the... Usually, we do our story circle piece a little bit sooner, and in this workshop, we slowed it down and put some of those other activities and had people immerse themselves in sharing ancestor stories, and sharing stories of images and sound before we did the story circle. And I would love to hear from you if you felt like that made a difference.
Tania Marien:
Yes, the walking activity did, because as you said, it made me more observant, and it slowed me down, and more intentional about listening, for sure. That absolutely played an important role for me in that. You're recording sound and you know that it needs to relay a message or you're just going to send a message or use it to communicate something to somebody else that generates a feeling or an understanding or nudge them to a perspective that maybe they hadn't had before. So, you just become more mindful about everything, really, the whole process.
Tania Marien:
I was wondering, you went into the workshop expecting... Did you come in expecting certain types of stories? And then with all the wonderful stories that were produced, how were these existing stories now different than what you were expecting?
Amy Hill:
Oh, gosh. I mean, we had some very simple story prompts, which I don't even remember what they were, but something to the effect of, "Tell a story about a moment when you deeply felt your connection to the natural world," or something like this. And honestly, we didn't talk that much about specifics, because with StoryCenter workshops, we often have broad topics or themes, but then ultimately, what comes out is just so deeply the product of that one person's direct lived experience. So, we didn't have a specific idea, but I was really heartened that people took up some of the themes of linking social justice issues with environmental issues, because that was one thing that we had wanted to be quite explicit. And the fact that it came through just on its own was really wonderful, because I think the collection of stories as a whole gives a snapshot into all of these unique individual perspectives, but then it paints that bigger picture at the same time.
Cassidy Villeneuve:
I think it did that in such a unique way too because it's not messaging, it's not telling people, "Here are the issues, here's what we need to do about it." It's exactly what you said, Tania, about the walking tour, inviting people to experience your experience, and then that personal becomes universal, it becomes understood on this deeper level well beyond what messaging about any particular topic can do, I think.
Amy Hill:
Yeah. And I appreciate you pointing that out. I mean, that's so much of our philosophy at StoryCenter, is to really respect and honor stories in a way that is not message-driven. That's a key aspect of our teaching is, if there's a message that's meant to come through, show it and let it come through and the contents of the story. I feel like this workshop was such a pure experience of people taking up this notion of, "Let me create this beautiful piece of art to speak to my experience," and then within those pieces of art, there are embedded all of these different beautiful lessons, takeaways, what have you, but they don't have to be heavy-handed and directive.
Tania Marien:
When you look over your shoulder and look back at the trail you've left behind, what do you see, Amy, in your work?
Amy Hill:
That's such a beautiful way of phrasing that question. I think, for me, I see a thread of multiple people's life experiences woven together in this beautiful tapestry or fabric. What is always most significant to me is the relationships that get sustained in the people that I meet, and how privileged and humbled I am to hear these beautiful expressions from their lives and how much they give of themselves into the process. And I see not so much the individual stories, which are these exquisite jewels, but I see people having been touched and moved and inspired in these different ways. So, it goes beyond the creation of the stories and has to do with how everybody connected in our workshops comes away from the experience.
Tania Marien:
What's next for you?
Amy Hill:
With this project or?
Tania Marien:
With the project or with your storytelling work?
Amy Hill:
It's funny that you ask that, because in thinking about this interview, I was reflecting on some of my other projects and some other work that we have in the works. And even just this one pilot effort has made me think a lot more concretely about how we can integrate attention to issues of the climate and the natural world and the environment into some of our other work. For instance, I'm part of this project right now with this group of international women's leaders as part of this leadership program, and it's women coming from countries all around the world that we're doing at StoryCenter, and I've just been thinking about where this piece about their relationship to the earth, and the environment, and the natural world fits into their journeys as leaders on all of these different issues. So, I really hope that this can become a core piece of how we work.
Amy Hill:
I will also say that the workshop coming as it did at that particular time of the pandemic was so vitally nurturing and healing for me because I was just about at the end of being able to cope with an entire year of doing the schooling at home with my daughter and trying to have a full-time job, so it was incredibly powerful to have this really, really inspiring group of women to meet with every week. And it also gave me, I guess, more of a sense of hope that we can continue our work at StoryCenter, utilizing these tools of the virtual world, Zoom and whatnot, and not having to make such a mark in terms of footprint of travel and having to travel but rather continuing to work in this way. And I feel like that's a personal commitment that I've taken up, is that I don't need to necessarily get on a plane to go across the world to work with a group, I can do that from home.
Tania Marien:
To learn more about the Earth Stories Workshop, visit the show notes for this episode at talaterra.com. Here, you will find information about StoryCenter as well as some instructions on how you can view the independent films created during the Earth Stories pilot. Thank you for joining us today. See you next time.
Tania Marien:
Talaterra is a podcast for and about independent educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and colleagues. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is Tania Marien.