Talk Series | Participatory Storytelling in Healthcare Practice, Research and Policy

Presenter: Antonia Liguori, Teesside University, United Kingdom

The Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit (RTRU) is delighted to be hosting two upcoming talks on the power of digital storytelling for improving health outcomes. The first talk has a research focus and will be held in-person and online, while the second has a clinical focus and is online only.

Talk 1: The benefits of the story-telling/story-listening loop within participatory research

Date: Tuesday 9 April 2024
Time: 12pm to 1pm
Venue: Nordmeyer Lecture Theatre, University of Otago Wellington, 23a Mein Street, Newtown, Wellington.

Livestream available.

Participatory storytelling is an enriching and powerful research approach that enables the researcher and the participant to shift power dynamics and establish new ways of working to achieve (together!) more meaningful and long-lasting results.

Storytelling is an effective way for people to connect, share knowledge, and generate change. Even more when the story-telling/story-listening loop is prioritised during this creative process. As our world becomes more diverse, it is crucial for academia and cultural institutions to promote engagement with different perspectives. Stories have a unique power to build empathy, trust, and understanding among communities. However, it is important to recognise that there isn't just one truth or perspective. Like Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, “relying on a single story can risk a critical misunderstanding”.

In this seminar, we'll explore the concept of co-created "Story Work" and how it involves collaborating to create stories that reflect diverse experiences and truths. We'll also look at how storytelling can be used in research to foster engagement and inform practice and policy.

Talk 2: Participatory storytelling to inform healthcare practice and policy

Date: Wednesday 10 April 2024
Time:7pm to 8pm

Online webinar

Social interaction is an essential factor in the development of an inclusive practice aiming at increasing individual and collective wellbeing. Starting from this premise, Digital Storytelling and a number of variations of its conventional model are presented here as a transformative approach, considering the ethos of Storytelling as a participatory practice and the flexibility of the various tools applied within it.

Our experience suggests that the role of emotion in the digital storytelling process is central to the promotion of ‘embodiment’, a specific form of knowledge that exists in ‘the telling of stories with emotional meaning’. This extraordinarily rich meaning-making process facilitated in the various steps of the Digital Storytelling approach, that constantly interweaves the personal and the collective, finds its engine in the hyper segmentation of the conventional DS model and its many disruptions driven by co-creation.

In this webinar, we'll look at how storytelling can be used to foster engagement and inform practice and policy.

These talks are hosted by Te Whare Whakamātūtū | The Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit