How Stories Can Bring Us Together by Joanna Yates

August 2007, it’s a Monday evening and I’m in a 99 seat theatre in Santa Monica California. The lights go down and the audience becomes silent. The first person takes to the stage, perches on a stool and starts to speak. Over the following seven minutes he tells us a story, a true story, and after he sits down another person takes his place and tells us another. This goes on for the next hour. I have discovered the art of live true storytelling. And I am hooked.

By the end of the night I am on the edge of my seat, the hour has passed in what feels like a moment and I am well and truly sold on personal storytelling. My mind is already thinking about how I could build on what I have experienced. Would people in the UK share their stories so publically? And how could I harness this type of experience and put it to use in the organisations I work with.

Three years later storytelling lies at the heart of my professional practise as an organisational psychologist and the storytelling event I founded in December 2007, Spark London, is a sell-out every month and has been hailed as “Britain’s first true storytelling club” by The Guardian. Several hundred people have shared a true story to packed audiences at the Canal Café Theatre in west London and thousands more have downloaded our free weekly pod cast. There is, it turns out, a huge appetite for telling and hearing true stories.

Why? What are people getting from personal true stories that they aren’t getting elsewhere?

I believe people are getting a much needed dose of real human connection. We all know life is speeding up and family ties are becoming more tenuous. At the same time, Facebook and Twitter and other techno-social networks, tantalise us with the promise to keep us connected to others no matter where we are. A new language of connections has evolved in the form of ‘pokes’, ‘friends’ and ‘tweets,’ but are they really able to satisfy what we are looking for?

For many people these frenzied attempts to connect miss the mark. They are the communication equivalent of eating a packet of Hobnobs. You get the instant hit, but without the substance you are soon left empty and searching for more and ultimately may feel unsatisfied. Sure there are those who know that social networking is a means to an end but there are also people who use modern technology as partial replacements for real human conversations.

How storytelling is getting us connected

Consolidation– carving a story out of our day to day existence involves inspecting our experiences in a way that we rarely have time to do. What happened? What did I do? And did this experience create a change? This process of consolidation is something our storytellers at Spark say is powerful for them. Equally, through listening to others share their experiences, members of the audience also start to appreciate and consolidate their own experiences.

Getting heard – There is a decline in people’s ability and willingness to listen to each other, while the need to be listened to is still very much alive and kicking. Daniel Goleman coined the term ‘Pizzled’ to describe the feeling we get when the person we are speaking to answers their blackberry or replies to an email rather then giving us their full attention. There is something rare and potent about telling a story to a room full of people and having them give you their full attention.

Relating to others – living in a densely populated city we pass people every day that we know nothing about. We get irritated if they walk too slowly or take too long at the check out. Spark London lets people look more deeply into the lives of others, people they might otherwise never meet or speak to. These insights bring people together because they scratch the surface and allow us to glimpse at the humanity we all share.

Storytelling is back and bringing us together just when we need it most. With the opportunity to take a break from the doing and enjoy speaking and sharing.

Joanna Yates is the founder of Spark London. For more information about Spark London shows, to download the free weekly pod cast or to get in contact with Joanna Yates go to www.sparklondon.com