Reflections on Lesson 6 (FKC): Creating audiences

Peggy Sax

Before joining this Conversation Forum , please review the materials in Lesson Six: Creating Audiences, Linking Lives & Building Community. In this section we review how narrative practitioners often seek to incorporate audiences in efforts such as letter-writing campaigns, outsider witness practices, reflecting teamwork, Tree of Life gatherings, ‘reclaiming community, and other community rituals.

In narrative practice, “documentation” is not an ugly word. Instead, we often create living documents through text, song, multi-media presentations, certificates photography, Tree of Life, and other co-creations. These “documents” offer opportunities for witnessing a preferred identity, and a sense of solidarity in reclaiming life out of the grip of a particular problem.

– What role do community building, linking lives, intentional witnesses and/or “creative documentation” play in your work? Can you tell us a story? Is there something you might show us?

– Having completed this lesson, are there new possibilities emerging for you?

– What else is on your mind?
Peggy

December 7, 2014

Hi Everyone,

Laurie Markham

To illustrate the role of some of these practices in my own work, I’m attaching a PowerPoint from a course I co-taught with John Winslade at Cal State University, San Bernardino. Near the end of the slideshow are samples of letters from my practice, as well as references to the Narrative practitioners whose work helped inspire me. The last two slides provide a template for a possible letter. Of course, my hope is that the template provides some scaffolding without limiting the creative thinking of the practitioner.