Date/Time
Date(s) - 12/03/2015
8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Location
Conversation Place
http://www.publicconversations.org/workshop/power-stories-moving-beyond-them-and-us
Summary:
What are the stories we hold most dear about ourselves? What stories do we tell about others, and how do those stories take shape? Research indicates that we make sense of the world through stories. But stories – particularly the ones we tell about other people – can sometimes deepen the rifts that come between us, creating a feared other; a caricatured “Them.”
This workshop offers tools and structures for harnessing the power of stories to move beyond stereotypes and fear, bringing “Us” and “Them” into relationship through understanding.
Learning Objectives:
Explore how stories can reinforce or erode stereotypes about “us” and “them.”
Understand the group dynamics of storytelling in a facilitated conversation and how it can foster new depths of understanding between people (with the re-humanizing art of activist photographer Dick Simon).
Discover the power of story through practicing telling your own.
Gain confidence in your ability to listen to and make sense of other people’s stories.
Results:
As a result of this workshop, you will be equipped to:
Feel heard and understood, and able to listen more deeply to another’s perspectives.
Help groups feel more connected and grounded in one another’s experiences.
Create opportunities for opponents to be seen and understood; to see one another’s humanity, and rebuild their own by moving beyond assumptions about “them” and “us.”
Harness the power of story in a range of settings, including facilitated dialogues, presentations or lectures, meetings, and interpersonal interaction.
Who might participate:
Educators engaging students in difficult conversations involving personal experiences or identity
Leaders and managers responsible for eliciting individual and shaping organizational stories
Civic leaders looking to encourage greater mutual understanding across political or ideological differences
Family therapists or mediators seeking to foster greater compassion between people in deep disagreement
Coaches, facilitators, or organizational consultants seeking to integrate story more intentionally into their practice.
Accreditation
This workshop is approved for 6 clock hours for national certified counselors, Massachusetts licensed mental health counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, and New Hampshire pastoral psychotherapists. This program has been approved for 6 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. Collaborative of NASW and the Boston College and Simmons Schools of Social Work Authorization Number D 71160-3. Credits are accepted by the NH Board of Mental Health Practice for all licensed NH mental health professionals.
This workshop is an expanded version of a workshop of the same title developed in collaboration with Laura Black, Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University.
