Storytelling - the Key to Quality Conversations with Visitors.
TheWholeStory uses storytelling because we believe it’s how humans understand, connect and communicate with each other. Our techniques and the workshops they are part of, help people to make best use of these in-built storytelling skills.
Sometimes staff and volunteers have conversations with visitors, about a work of art, an object, a landscape, something that happened there. Not planned. Someone asks a question and it turns into dialogue, an exchange, a shared moment.
This is not about how to go up to a visitor to initiate the conversation or how to get more of them in a day, it is about the quality of interactions when they happen.
There are some approaches you can take from storytelling, that we use across theWholeStory’s training and workshops, to prepare, guide and enrich the conversations you have with visitors.
What makes a good conversation a good conversation?
What does a good conversation look or sound like?
What’s happening?
Perhaps you thought of these:
There’s a common interest – even between a novice and expert or opposing opinions
Balance – an even quantity of dialogue and listening between talkers
There is a flow and momentum, between thinking, talking and looking
You don’t want it to stop or it finds its own natural conclusion
The dialogue moves around the subject and out and back again
You both talk about small stuff and big stuff.
A good conversation is both a good experience and engages us. Experience and engagement are both important vocabulary to museums, heritage and culture. But what do those words mean?
In our training and workshops, we define experience as what we/visitors think and feel and do. I go to a museum and the collection will make me think, I will feel emotions and I might even do something as simple as looking differently or more closely at something (an action). The quantity and quality of what I can think, feel and do at a museum is my experience. Through that thinking and feeling and doing I will be engaging with the collection – I will have a relationship with it, or my relationship will grow or change. So, if I have a conversation with a member of staff at a museum they can influence how and what I think, feel and do – what I experience and how I engage.
Engage has a sibling – Connect, and connection is another important element of a conversation, it’s about the relationship between people, a mutual interest and respect for each other. Therefore, a conversation with connection, allows for the visitor to do and say as much as a member of staff or volunteer. In a handling session or an activity, a talk or a tour the staff member or volunteer is facilitating or controlling the exchange. But in a conversation, ideally, it’s evenly balanced. So as a starter, in any conversation you have, stay aware of what you and your visitor are thinking and feeling and doing. Each of these can prompt or inspire what you say and can share together to create both connection and engagement.
A further way to break this down is to use what we call Like Dislike What? As humans we are reacting and responding to everything around us in these 3 ways. How we each react differently gives us things to talk about, what we agree on gives us things to talk about and what we don’t know or are curious about gives us things to talk about.
If I bring a friend to my favourite museum, I want to show them what I like there best – and to talk about why I like it and find out what they like about it. My younger brother saw Damien Hirst’s formaldehyded Cow and Calf at Tate Modern many years ago - he did not like it and he told me why, this then got us into a conversation about what Hirst wanted us to think and feel about the work. Sometimes I will see something in a display case and just not know what it is and it might ignite my curiosity, or I could overlook it because it is not familiar to me, but if I ask someone who knows about it to tell me about it then we have a conversation.
Like Dislike What? gives us routes into subjects; we can start to talk about something from our valid first impressions and build and reflect on it through the conversation. Like Dislike What? invites and encourages the visitor to have their own reactions to what is in front of them. You can then draw them out further, offer your own Like Dislike What? in contrast or agreement, ask questions that ignite your mutual curiosity.
As part of my work I speak a lot and I also listen to people speak a lot. And I started to notice you could organise people based on how they spoke and listened and you can observe it (and use it) in conversations too. There are explainers, explorers and evangelisers.
Some people have knowledge and they like to explain it when they speak or when some people listen they need to or enjoy understanding the detail.
Some people like to explore all the possibilities, options and interpretations when they speak and some people listen and engage by having lots of questions.
Some people speak with a certainty, and evangelise for what they know or believe and some people like to hear a clear argument for one thing.
Be aware for which of the 3 you speak with and how you listen or take information in. And take into account that your visitor might listen and speak best with another approach. They mix together well. You can mix the 3 up in a conversation, in how you respond in the moment and in any preparation or thinking you have about a subject:
What is it about a subject that you can explain, build an understanding of, share an experience, a process? – you can reveal these details through-out, describe them.
What questions or unknowns exist around a subject? – you can find answers with your visitor, get caught up in different possibilities or points of view.
What do you believe strongly about in your conversation subject that you want to propose or argue for or against? – you can suggest a strong point of view and look at the fors and againsts of it with your visitor.
These will give you different ways into a single subject, and offer different areas to dig around in within a conversation.
Sometimes just looking and noticing what you see is enough. A conversation can be about what you are both seeing, describing it, along with Like Dislike What? to notice and express feelings, emotions and thoughts or opinions raised by what you are looking at. There is a lot of looking in museums but often not enough seeing (or other senses too). We need help to slow down, pay attention, look a little longer so we can experience and engage with what is there.
“I like the use of blue in that.”
“Now all I can see is blue.”
“Blue is always associated with boys but this is so feminine.”
“Have you noticed the blue in that one and the use of pink in that one…”
Any subject will take place in 3 ways or across 3 scales. Individuals, groups and the largest context you choose to be relevant.
A work of art (for example) is about the artist, the owner, the viewer (which could be you and your visitor). (Individual stories.)
It is about all of the artist’s work, or the school or period of art they belong to. The exhibition or the collection the work of art is part of. (Group or collective stories.)
It is also about what it says about human suffering or what beauty is, how the work of art fits into art history as a whole. (The biggest story the work of art is part of.)
When we talk about any subject (a work of art, an object, a period in history, a town...) we can focus on any of the 3 scales and move across and around them. This will be influenced by where your visitor’s interest is, but what you discover through your conversation in one scale will enlighten or enrich or explain the others.
The scales are also a way to relate your visitor’s personal contributions to your object, its history, your museum and broader history.
“My granny had a tea pot just like that”
“When was she born, or when did she have the tea pot?”
“She bought it from the maker I think in the 20’s”
“Oh where was that?...”
May be we find out Granny lived in the same town as ceramicist x, and this design relates to a significant movement. Antiques Road Show moment. It may be a smaller story, with less TV wow. But you can help the visitor to see where their story fits in with a bigger story. And ideally make them feel that they are contributing to your museum’s story and that you want to hear their story.
With Think, Feel, Do (experience and engagement), Like, Dislike What? Explain, Explore, Evangelise and 3 Scales you can find prompts for and deep dives into a conversation, you can listen better to keep the conversation balanced and create a shared moment.
