When the world seems to be full of anger and division, one organization is working to reconnect communities through the art of storytelling.
Narrative 4 is a global nonprofit using story exchanges, a practice where individuals share and listen to each other’s personal stories, to bridge societal divides.
“So many of us, with the way our world feels right now, can have a sense of hopelessness,” said Sharon Hanson, a lead trainer for Narrative 4. “That can make us ask the question ‘what can I do?’. It’s through story that we can make those connections that bind us together and build a sense of community.”
Hanson was a high school Language Arts teacher at Boise High School in 2017 when she met Colum McCann, co-founder of Narrative 4. McCann taught Hanson about story exchanges and their impact.
Inspired by McCann’s work, Hanson integrated story exchanges into her curriculum to build strong relationships among her students.
Hanson now facilitates story exchanges and trains other educators to do the same through the organization.
In each story exchange, participants share personal stories with a partner. While one person speaks, the other listens. Participants then join larger groups, where they retell their partner’s stories.
Rather than simply sharing what their partner told them, they retell it in the first-person, taking on the identity of the original storyteller. This enables participants to connect with and understand their storytelling partner on a deeper level.
“As humans, we are hardwired for stories,” Hanson said. “When we hear another person’s story and spend time together in that narrative encounter, we find ourselves in synchronicity. There is an understanding of how much we have in common as humans, as opposed to what makes us different.”
Narrative 4 believes understanding is key to bringing people together in an increasingly divisive world.
“Narrative 4 is all about building and creating empathy,” Hanson explained. “The work is about using stories to build and create those social connections, to see one another as having something in common as opposed to what makes us different.”
The organization focuses on bringing people together who may disagree or have different backgrounds. Story exchanges are meant to help those individuals understand each other, ideally resulting in peaceful civic engagement.
“It’s very hard to ‘other’ someone when you know their story,” Hanson added.
Hanson introduced Narrative 4 to the Boise State Writing Project, an organization that supports Idaho educators and offers training on innovative teaching practices.
The director of the Boise State Writing Project at that time, Dr. Jeff Wilhelm, worked to integrate story exchanges into their training.
“We invited about 30 of our Writing Project fellows to get trained as story exchange leaders,” Wilhelm said. “We then started integrating it into all of our work — we now do story exchanges in our institutes and workshops. It’s really grown.”
The Boise State Writing Project is a local affiliate of the National Writing Project. The organization allows educators to learn from each other, giving them the opportunity to share their ideas and teaching practices with one another.
For Narrative 4, this teachers-teaching-teachers approach allowed the practice to spread quickly throughout the state of Idaho.
“Those teachers go out and train other teachers, and then those teachers use Narrative 4 with their students,” Wilhelm said.
One of those educators is Elizabeth Barnes, an English professor at Boise State. She uses story exchanges in her classroom every semester.
“My class is much closer when we get done with [the story exchange],” Barnes said.
Halfway through each semester, when her students have gotten comfortable with each other, she facilitates a story exchange.
“[Story exchanges] help people hear experiences that aren’t their own, and create bonds with people who they maybe would never talk to or ever consider their perspective or journey in life,” Barnes said.
Barnes uses the exchange to create an environment where students can be vulnerable and open.
“I hope they learn to listen deeply to others and that everyone has a story, and that we are all humans,” Barnes said. “We can connect at a deeper level if we allow ourselves the time and space to actually connect, versus seeing each other as a stereotype or seeing the surface.”
“This idea of humans sharing stories is not new,” Hanson added. “It’s something that’s a part of us, and there’s a hunger for stories in us.”
The organization teaches that to encourage civic engagement, the first step is to create strong connections with each other.
“Democracy requires strong communities to work together,” Hanson said. “That begins with personal relationships, and that’s what stories can do.”
