To educate, organize and agitate are three key points of action in most social change initiatives and Story Telling is a vital component of all these three points of action.
If you are engaged with social change initiatives, your work most likely involves challenging existing belief systems and creating alternative narratives in the face of a dominant one. Whether you are writing a press statement, making a poster, publishing a pamphlet, presenting a slide show, sharing poetry or singing a movement song, you are telling a story. Story by story, bit by bit, you are constantly working towards shifting the narrative.
Story telling is a mutual and participatory process, which acknowledges the audience as living and emotional beings, capable of change. Today, as we witness growing injustices and apathy, learning the art of Story Telling could help us to creatively reach out to variety of audiences to relate with a social issue and work towards social change.
About the workshop
This 5 day workshop titled “Kahaani Aur Sangharsh” will focus on sharpening the participants’ skill to appreciate, identify and analyze stories and the politics they represent. It will also equip the participants with a set of tools/methods to construct the form and expression of a story, visually while staying in tune with its essence.
The workshop will adopt a participatory approach and focus on drawing from experiences of the participants in constructing stories. The participatory nature of this workshop will enable the participants to listen to and share stories with each other and address questions about the politics of the teller and how it contributes to the story in various ways. We will also use multiple media as teaching material such as films, books, music, posters, paintings and written stories told and made by others as examples to learn from.
This workshop will focus on ‘how to build a story’ and set of techniques or tools to build it. So while we will explore and discuss different tools of Story Telling, the focus will also be on coming up with a creative output that could be tested in the field when participants return to their area of work.
The workshop will cover the following key themes:
- Stories as communication
- The significance of Story Telling in Social Change
- The use of visual stories in building a social movement or campaign
- Processes in Visual Story development
- Components of an effective story and Story Telling
The participants can choose to work with one of the media during the course.The media that we will be working with during the course of the workshop are:
- Still and moving images (photo essays, campaign films)
- Illustrations, graphic novels, posters and story-books
Who is the workshop for?
This workshop is for Storytellers, community mobilisers, artists, activists and campaigners. Anyone else interested in understanding how visual communication for social change could be constructed for variety of audiences, is also welcome.
About the facilitator
Junuka Deshpande is a documentary filmmaker. Her experience of traveling into the remote forests of the country and interacting with the Adivasi communities changed her perspective as a filmmaker and visual artist. Her practice, since then has expanded with the questions of power and hierarchy embedded in the process of documentation and storytelling. Sometimes, it has also become inward and reflexive, giving rise to imaginations that have stemmed from real experiences.
Her teaching practice in Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology has been around the art and practice of observation-interaction and its role in image making and story building, while building a relationship between the self and the surrounding. She works with multiple media which draw from a wide range of texts, films and art works.
A combination of Hindi and English.
1st to 5th November, 2017.
Sambhaavnaa Institute, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh
How to apply
The application form is available at this link.
The contribution amount is Rs. 4,000 for five days including workshop materials, food and accommodation. If you or your organization is unable to contribute the full amount please mention so in the application form.
For more information please call 889 422 7954 or email: firstname.lastname@example.org
For details, please visit the official link given here.