Moving Stories

At the Saskatchewan History & Folklore Society, we believe that stories create a human connection and invoke an emotional response in one another. Communities flourish when they are able to draw from stories derived from personal experiences and local cultures. Storytelling encourages understanding and value connection, and through this newfound empathy, there is the potential to engage audiences as active participants.

In December 2015, the Saskatoon Open Door Society, the University of Saskatchewan, the City of Saskatoon, and other community organizations partnered to put on Moving Stories Project, an interactive storytelling event presenting the experience of Indigenous and refugee youth.

Following this, the SHFS got a Multicultural Initiatives Fund Grant from SaskCulture to follow up with partners and participants, identify learnings, and explore how we can support future storytelling projects.

Throughout 2016, the SHFS talked to partners and participants and conducted an environmental scan to identify some of the Saskatoon organizations that use storytelling in their work.

We then held a half-day session for Saskatoon storytelling organizations and individuals. The goals were to share the learnings from the past year, network & share knowledge, and talk about how storytelling practice can be further supported in Saskatoon. Some people liked the Saskatoon session so much that they asked us to do another in Regina, which we did!

From these conversations, participants emphasized the importance of personal stories, the need to build skills not only for storytellers but for listeners as well, creating safe spaces for storytelling, the significance of flexible funding models, and much more!