Storytelling Revisited 2020: Stories for social change

Abstract

As it was pointed out in last year’s edition of this International Conference, “humankind has been telling stories for ages. It has been a method used to make sense of the environment, organize experience and ideas and it has been used to create shared understanding with the whole community. It is an art form with a purpose to educate, inspire and communicate values and cultural traditions. Storytelling typically follows a structure that describes the cause-effect relationships between events that occur over a specific time and that affects a group of individuals. It is often interactive and can help the listeners to cultivate their imagination.” (Canals-Botines & Medina-Casanovas, 2019, p. 51) Storytelling has been considered a communication tool and it has been a researched and debated concept within different fields over the recent years. Health care and social studies are progressively applying narratives to diagnosis and to the education of patients and practitioners. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, storytelling has the potential to generate a shared understanding and through its engaging nature it attracts, sustains interest, and enables people to make meaningful connections. This third edition of this Conference, sponsored by several research groups across UVic-UCC, i.e. GRELL, GETLIHC, TEXLICO, TRACTE and GRAC from the Faculty of Education, Translation and Human Sciences (FETCH), EMPREN, from the Faculty of Business and Communication Studies (FEC), and GSaMIS, from the Faculty of Medicine, aimed at providing a forum for researchers to deepen into the analysis of storytelling as a tool for social change, community development and learning. Hence, this academic meeting revolved around the study of narrative structures and storytelling applied to education and to social change. This meeting was of interest to teachers, students and experts both in the Education and Translation but also to teachers, students and experts in Health Science, Social Sciences and Business.