We all have seen it a thousand times or even done it ourselves. Sat down with a group of our friends or family and shared a story about what happened to us that day or in years past. It is a window into seeing what is important to a person and what inspires them. With television, books and cinema it is sometimes viewed as a lost art. Something that was used as entertainment before there were experts to do it for us. I believe that this lost art should be reclaimed and used to share our cultural differences and uniqueness with one another.
During the summer months I have been working on a project with Canada World Youth that was aimed towards promoting CWY to minority youth groups. As a component of this promotion we were looking at including global education to inspire the youth to join our programming or similar projects. I have done a fair amount of work with Augusto Boal’s ‘Theatre of the Oppressed.’ With this the facilitator works with the group to talk about difficult issues of oppression and to work towards talking about solutions using drama as the ‘springboard’ for all of the discussion. This style of work was designed with intention of helping oppressed communities understand their position and what they could do to make it better.
At the beginning of the summer we looked at different options for groups to do work with. We found a few opportunities of groups that fit with our goals. We pointed out Camp Fyrefly which is located in Edmonton and is a camp designed for lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender youth. We also found Native Friendship Centres that are located across the province. There are 19 centres located across the province. They are located in urban areas to help the native community find ways to adjust from reserve culture to urban culture while maintaining native heritage. We booked a workshop at four of the centres in Alberta: Slave Lake, Grande Prairie, Hinton and Edson.
In designing a workshop we wanted to do something that would work towards talking about solutions for some of the difficult situations faced by these groups. We designed a workshop that started by playing some games to get to know each other better and also to have some fun. We would start with a game that taught us each others names and then followed it up with a game that involved sitting in a circle and singing a song in Spanish together. After this we played a game where we broke up into pairs and interviewed our partner. We asked each other our names, ages, a dream we have for our life, and an interesting story from our life. We then came back together as a group and introduced our partner to the group. After this we played a game where we told each other stories from our lives. Our last designed game was one where the students would design two pictures or statues out of there bodies that displayed what they think is a problem in our world and then design two more that show a solution to the problem. We would then discuss if the solution was the best possible solution and the process to get from the problem to the solution.
I should mention before going on in this article that I am a straight, white male. I only mention this because it is a sensitive issue when doing a workshop for these two different groups. It is not something that can be hidden, especially my race. The reason we felt comfortable doing this workshop is because the role the presenter plays, is merely as a true facilitator of the youth while they control their own learning. They are sharing their stories, taking risks as they choose, and the presenters are sharing in the same manner. It is a model that allows for everyone to share and for everyone’s views to be respected.
The first workshop we did was for the Camp Fyrefly group. They were very responsive as a group. They did well with all the games and had fun with getting to know each other. When we played the storytelling game they were very responsive and went straight into stories talking about when they came out to their parents or how they discovered their sexuality, when we only asked that they shared stories that were important for them. My guess for the reason why this happened is they were attending a camp with the goal of talking about these issues and the youth felt safe to do this. When we came to the problem and solution activity we had great discussions about the issues and about how to get to them realistically. I believe this workshop went very well because of the nature of the camp. It was a very safe atmosphere were all of the youth felt very safe. The youth also had experience with drama which aided them in this workshop. The organizers of this camp did a very good job of ensuring that the youth were there to learn and to be comfortable with who they were and what they were learning.
Next we did a tour of the workshop to the different Native Friendship centres. Very quickly in doing this workshop for the first group we realized something needed to change. The youth in these groups were not responding well to taking the risks that are required for the workshop. This could have been for a number of reasons. I believe there are two main reasons: their apprehension because of my race and the inexperience of the youth working with drama and other creative forms. To be able to get the youth to fully trust me I would have to form a long term relationship with the group where we could build skills together that would allow the youth to take some of the risks associated with this style of workshop. With this project I would only get to visit each centre once, so building this relationship would not be possible. Instead of changing the whole project which would have been impossible at this point we moved the focus of the workshop from talking about solutions for societal problems to sharing stories. This did not require a huge change in the outline of the presentation. It only required that we eliminate the last activity of the problem and solution activity.
There was an intangible element that I did not prepare for when booking these presentations. Two of the centres prepared a significant native cultural element to add to our workshop. One of the centres prepared for an elder to come and do a smudge ritual with the group and the other group had a member that preformed a drum dance for us and then we all shared in a circle dance together. This element was very welcomed because it caused for the students to be more receptive to the workshop and to give it a focus point of native culture. I believe it also caused they youth to be more confident with themselves and more willing to take risks. This meant that they were willing to tell stories that they viewed as being very important. This opened a window for them to share stories with one another and with me so everyone could view the unique qualities of each other’s culture. I was excited to be involved with this activity. I got to hear stories that showed me a small part of the beauty of native culture here in Alberta.
I would view this project as a successful educational experience for the youth that were involved, but maybe even more, a successful educational experience for me. I got to see and hear an important part of Albertan culture. The youth represented at the Native Friendship Centres and the Camp Fyrefly make up an important part of our Albertan culture and being able to hear their stories and even to share my own stories with them was an excellent opportunity.
I would encourage everyone to engage themselves in storytelling in the near future. Listen to your friends and family members tell their stories and think about what it is telling about what they think is important and what their culture is. Even listen to yourself and the stories you tell. What are they saying about you. Most of all remember that we do not need to rely solely on the experts in Hollywood to tell us great stories, we can find the best stories inside of one another.
