SHAPE OF THE STORY:
Animist Storytelling for Narrative Strategists
Any good storyteller will tell you that the story is woven by both the teller and the elements of the story themselves: the characters, the setting, the times. This type of animist storytelling, where all stories are alive and all things that are alive are beings, has been central to culture making for most of human history. As contemporary artists and cultural workers, pulling these ancestral practices through in our movement comms and narrative strategy work reconnects us to the somatic root of storytelling that moves the body of the listener: creating belonging, teaching, inciting action.
Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa writes in Luz en Lo Oscuro: “throughout the centuries, one culture touches and influences another, passing on its metaphors and its gods before it dies. Metaphors ARE gods. According to archetypal psychology, we have internalized the old deities, animals, and forces of nature that our ancestors considered gods. We could say that metaphors are allies, spirits (transformative aspects of the unconscious seeking to enter the conscious).”
To learn how to tell stories collaboratively with the story-beings themselves, we have to develop a posture of resting that allows us to listen into the imaginal or dream space. In this workshop, we will practice dropping into restful awareness to explore contemporary deities in modern myth using an animist-somatic lens. We will listen decolonially for the shapes of these cultural beings through the use of metaphor and track how they move in the body of the listener. Our collective attention will lend itself to charging the field of narrative strategy with the transformative animist-somatic storytelling of our way-back ancestors.
DATE & TIME
April 27, 2023
9–11a PST / 11a–1p CST / 12–2p EST
WORKSHOP FLOW
This workshop will be recorded. While a portion of the workshop will be devoted to group practice and reflection, it will be possible to have a meaningful experience by watching the recording at your own pace. No prior artistic or somatic experience is necessary.
RESOURCE FLOW
Contributing $100 for participation would cover our costs. We offer the following sliding scale for you to sit with and assess where you, your ancestors, and your current financial situation land:
$0 for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who consider this work to be reclaiming ancestral lifeways stolen by colonization, enslavement & genocide. This is not a scholarship. We believe descendants and survivors of these legacies should never have to pay to access what is rightfully theirs.
$50 - $150 for folks from the global South, people from historically disenfranchised communities, low income/working class folks, people with less access to wealth (savings, investments, inheritance).
$100 - $200 for folks from the global North, folks who identify as middle or upper class, people who have access to savings, investments, or inheritance.
$200 - 300 for people who have benefitted from wealth extraction and would like to participate in the cultural healing practice of wealth redistribution, you might consider contributing generously at this level to support us in hosting cohort members reclaiming ancestral lifeways.
