Socially engaged storytelling is telling stories that matter personally on topics that matter globally. It is telling stories that address and promote awareness of social issues and encourage conversation and positive change. It goes beyond entertainment, aiming to inspire action and create a more inclusive and just society.

The Cassandra team is organising a capacity building concept starting with young storytellers as a pilot/try out, leading to a methodology and to training material as project outputs serving the whole storytelling sector. The project aims to support storytellers to become ‘socially engaged performers’. Five European countries are part of the project: Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway. Based on the techniques and approaches used in Cassandra, a public training resource will be created for anyone who wishes to use storytelling in community work. The Cassandra Project is a Creative Europe project coordinated by FEST.

The international f2f training is designed to bring the necessary tools and skills to the young storytellers to start their own creation phase. They will engage in community work, research their chosen topic, and test it for relevance within the chosen local community. This will be the start of a collaboration where the community provides the inspiration and stories to serve as a base for a performance, interwoven with personal and traditional stories.

The Challenge:

• Using culture and art to tackle social issues
• Capacity building of artists (storytellers) to impact social processes.
• Capacity building of community workers and adult educators to use cultural and artistic competences to serve their target groups.
  
  

Target Groups/Clients:

Storytellers, community workers, adult educators, local authorities, local communities

Solutions:

Developing training resources for capacity building of the target groups in socially engaged storytelling.

Innovation:

• The international context: 5 countries actively involved with impact on all FEST members (29 countries).

• Pilot development focussing on young storytellers (age 18-30).

• Active involvement of local communities.

Impact:

• Higher capacity of the storytelling sector to deal with values and social issues and to work with communities.
• Higher capacity of social entrepreneurs to include culture and art in their work.

Coming Soon

Partnering Organisation:
FEST