Facilitating a Story Circle

In working with communities with strong oral traditions, we have found story circles to be a powerful and effective approach for engaging immigrants and refugees in dialogue about issues that matters to them, for sharing their stories, and for building relationships and understanding of each other. This approach was largely used by the participants of the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program as an approach to engage people in dialogue while conducting a community assessment.

The Pan-Valley Institute learned about story circles during the opening of the first Tamejavi Festival when we had the privilege to participate in a story circle facilitated by John O’Neal, co-founder of the Free Southern Theater and Junebug Productions, based in New Orleans. In 2014, we invited Stephanie McKee-Anderson, current executive artistic director of Junebug Productions, to facilitate a story circle workshop for the second cohort of participants of the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program. This tool is developed from the notes of that particular workshop.

A. There are four parts to the story circle process:

1.    Introduction and guidelines explanation

2.    Story circle is a space for listening and telling our stories; it is more important to listen than tell

3.    Crosstalk: After everyone in the circle has told their story, there is an opportunity to talk to each other and ask questions4. Transformative action: Action that come after story circle

B. Atmosphere

Sitting in a circle allows participants to see each other, make eye contact, and gives a sense of togetherness

C. Important guidelines

•     Always introduce everyone and tell the purpose of the story circle

•     Be transparent about the theme of the circle 

•     Only one person tells a story at a time. Limit each speaker to about three minutes, as this time limit encourages people to be concise and to have a beginning, middle and an end to their story. Use a timekeeper and honor each person’s time limit. 

•     We plant the seed, give a story, and continue to talk and grow the seed 

•     The circle is not just representative of community; it represents the democratic process 

•     Go clockwise around the circle as it will ensure no one is missed

•     Silence is an option, but let it be from a place of reflection and not of fear 

•     Be present in sharing about you, and remember that reciprocity is about giving and receiving 

•     Take a moment to sit and reflect on the stories you heard

D. Cultural Protocols

It is important that the facilitator know the group and how to approach it; no one circle will be the same as they are made of unique participants. It may be helpful for the facilitator to share his or her story first to make participants comfortable and encourage them to follow suit.

E. Transformative Action 

End the story circle with an opportunity for people to translate what they learned into transformative action. Challenge them to think about what they’re going to do with this new information.

Source: http://junebugproductions.org

The Social Importance of Sharing Our Stories

The activity in this tool provides steps for constructing compelling community stories.

Instructions: Come prepared to share a real-life story about a time when your community faced a large challenge; include details about the specific obstacles you faced and how that problem was or was not solved. Elaborate on the people that helped try to solve the problem and what they specifically did that worked or didn’t work in making the desired changes. Each participant will have eight minutes to share their story.

COMMUNITY CHALLENGES: Tell about a time when your community faced a major problem that upset many people.

SETTING: What else contributed to this problem or challenge in your community? Examples could include the year, political climate, relevant history or cultural perspectives.

EVENT: What actually happened that created the problem that your community felt they needed to address: a political decision, a natural disaster, a long-standing problem?

CHARACTERS: Who were the characters involved: who did you disagree with, who did you need to approach to solve the problem, who took leadership from your community, what other people ended up getting involved?

ACTIONS: What did your community leader or leaders do to solve this problem: Did they confront the situation and challenge the power? Inspire other to act together? Come up with creative new idea? Develop a good plan and followed through? Something else? Be as specific as possible.

OUTCOME: What was the outcome or effect of the challenge your leadership took on?

LEARNING: What did you learn from this experience?

Facilitating Multilingual Conversations

This tool shares key recommendations for facilitating multilingual conversations.

Background
Since the Pan Valley Institute’s inception, we took on the challenge of bringing together groups of people with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and set a goal of facilitating one conversation in many languages. Removing language as a communication barrier and instead allowing for multilingual conversations builds meaningful and respectful interethnic relationships. To help foster these relationships, we decided to invest in equipment that allows for simultaneous interpreting.

Why is it important to provide interpreters?
We place a high value on interpreting skills and believe that being bilingual does not necessarily translate to being a skilled interpreter. We strongly recommend hiring professional interpreters when facilitating multilingual dialogues; particpants will be grateful and have the confidence needed to be involved in the dialogue. 

Key Recommendations

•   Contact an interpreter who is well-established and that is familiar with your work and the communities you work with.

•  Meet with the interpreter before your meeting or event to go over any documents, the agenda, provide background information, etc. so they are familiar with the program before it begins. 

•    Because interpreting can add a significant amount of time to the program,
it is recommended that the interpreting be simultaneous.

• When contacting the interpreter, tell him or her they will be doing simultaneous interpreting and using equipment, as not all interpreters are comfortable or have experience doing this.

•    Prepare the interpreting equipment the day before to make sure everything is working and the equipment is fully charged.

•    Have the interpreter arrive at least 30 minuntes before the event to allow time to get familiar with the interpreting equipment.

•    All interpreters must use the equipment to avoid having to speak too loudly to eliminate the person in need of the service not hearing correctly and to eliminate other potential technical difficulties.

•    At the start of your event, explain the logistics of simultaneous interpreting to the audience.

Simultaneous Interpreting With More Than Two Languages

•   Each interpreter is assigned a channel; i.e. Spanish (CH1), English (CH2), Arabic (CH3) and Hmong (CH4).

•   One option for interpretation is when someone is speaking in Spanish, the Spanish interpreter will be in channel one and the rest of interpreters should switch to channel one to listen to the English interpretation.

•   The interpreters will then switch to their assigned channels to share what has been said in the language they are interpreting to. 

•   Another option is when a person is speaking in their native language, the interpreter for that language translates it to English through a microphone rather than the interpreting equipment. By doing this, the rest of the interpreters will avoid having to switch between channels.

“One conversation in many languages”
-one aspect of PVI’s mission