Building Connections and Community Heritage
Storytelling is a dynamic creative form on which to base outreach, community, education or visitor projects, events or workshops, while offering participants opportunities to develop themselves, their expressive confidence and a greater sense of identity and place.
Storytelling activities can be used to inspire a new understanding of, and relationship with a museum, heritage, history or culture, by inviting participants to find a connection, take ownership of it and contribute something back.
By actively involving visitors and the community, especially through stories, you can contribute towards an ongoing, living and cohesive creation of community, heritage, history and culture.
How Storytelling can enhance your organisation, property,
staff and volunteers:
Do staff and volunteers deliver tours in a natural, engaging and enthusiastic
style?
Do your staff and volunteers know how to respond to visitor’s questions?
What
is the principal narrative of your property or museum and are the stories
told by staff and volunteers coherent with it?
Can staff improvise and be
sensitive to different audiences and edit themselves accordingly?
Do staff
and volunteers have an active interest in the people and stories related
to your museum or property, from the past and present?
Do staff and volunteers
contribute to creating a relationship between the museum or property and
the visitor?