Storytelling is Everywhere

Most of us love to storytell or hear stories. I know I loved and still love to hear stories from others. I grew up in a household where storytelling happened while I helped my mom cook or when I worked in the field with my dad. Growing up my much older brothers often said "when you were little you use to...." Of course, I loved to hear things about ME as a child! Now, I treasure these stories. As a child sitting with the adults I was a captive audience as I listened to their stories of the past.

We all participate in storytelling but may not call it that. Sitting around over a cup of coffee and sharing what is happening in our lives is storytelling. Calling, emailing, writing, texting, you-tube, and blogging is a way to share one's story. Using a digital frame or photo album to display personal events and invite conversation about the pictures is storytelling. Even movies is a way to explain particular events.

What makes storytelling important to us? It is a way to share an event and how the events affected us. It is a way to connect with others, celebrate, share challenges and tranfer knowledge.

Communities may not think that storytelling fits for them. But storytelling is already very common for communities. Community websites, local groups with blogs, books about local events, newspaper stories, plaques on buildings, a student thank you card about the field trip to the local grocery store, and numerous other avenues is a way to portray a community story. Snapshot stories or captions about an event or person in a leisure guide are even a manner of storytelling.

The creative side of storytelling can be inspired by using puppetry, music, drama, theatre, costume, dance, art, and several other mediums. Have you ever watched a cultural event or observed an artist at work and wondered about the story behind the tools, costume, or instrument? The curiousity the drives us to find out more about something is quite powerful and rewarding.

Alberta Community and Co-operative Association was represented at a "Growing Rural Tourism" conference where I participated in a storytelling session. Like the Co-operative Association, ACE Communities encourages the communities we work with to share stories in order to communicate successes and experiences. This sharing opens doors for communities to learn from one another. It is a way to discover more about how a community is growing, learning, and changing. The storytelling is an opportunity to understand different ways of doing things and a way to identify assets, both intangible and tangible.

Equally important, storytelling is a way that communities can raise the profile of rural Alberta and share the importance of rural communities.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Recently I was able to represent Alberta Recreation and Parks Association at a "Growing Rural Tourism" Conference in Camrose, AB. One participant asked me what the campsite space measurements were for the local campground being built in their community. Others did not see the connection between recreation and parks to tourism.

This left me realizing that sometimes within our own organizational circle we may take for granted that others easily understand what the organization is able to provide. Alternatively, we may forget that the focus we are involved with does not always have the same meaning to people not immersed within the sector.

To me, that means that developing connections and partnerships is vital to create awareness about what organizations do. Creating connections between other sectors helps to demonstrate how interwoven and interdependent we really are. It helps all of us see the "bigger picture".

Developing partnerships and connections does take work. Sometimes it means thinking outside the box. Sometimes it even means breaking down barriers. However these relationships are created, they take time and attention.

Partnership building between cross-sectors seems to be one of the best way to move forward in the future for organizations because it creates more space for success and collaboration. The process creates opportunity for growth and learning.

Tourism, recreation, and parks is a natural fit for developing partnerships. Whether a tourist or a resident the impacts of recreation and parks affects quality of life.

In essence, developing partnerships and connections is a way to build the setting in order to see the bigger picture. Some of us are just able to see the picture before the entire frame is built.