Seed Stories
First People’s Convening
The climate catastrophe has a huge impact on indigenous peoples around the world. Rising waters are claiming whole islands in the South Pacific. Warmer temperatures and stormier seas break down the icebergs off the Alaskan coast and the oceans pound on the permafrost, claiming inches and feet of lands villagers live upon. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, in partnership with the Alaska Institute for Justice, reached out to NewStories for help. Together we saw an opportunity to connect First People’s doing their own local work to face the climate crisis. We shared our experiences in creating powerful relationships across time and space - what we call translocal relationships. We used our skills at designing powerful convenings, facilitating for deep learning, and harvesting to share the stories.
We were guided most by our principles of Connect & Share, Link Inner & Outer Work, and Feel & Notice as we worked with our partners to design a powerful three day convening of people from 28 communities - First People’s from the South Pacific, Alaska, Bangladesh, Louisiana and the Olympic Peninsula. At the end of the convening an Alaskan tribal elder stood and said we have heard 28 stories - and they are all one story. We must tell this story of the destruction of our lands. We are invisible to most people - and we must stand together to be seen. The story of this convening is rich and powerful. Progress on this work was disrupted by COVID and we now hope for a next convening of this community in 2024.
Regenerating Community After Disaster
Across our small planet, more and more people witness their lives changed in an instant when disaster strikes. What was is gone. What might be is invisible. In the days and weeks after destruction, while the grief is still overwhelming, when the trauma is settled just a bit, some people are able to ask what do I want now, for my life and the future of my community? In this excruciating time, there is an opening to leap beyond old constraints.
NewStories spent six years working with people in communities across Japan after the Triple Disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear explosions on March 11, 2011. Our work began, simply with listening. Being witness. Standing with. Almost all the principles we work with now were revealed to us in this time. Our listening almost always led to convenings -- bringing people in different communities together with each other and bringing people from different communities facing similar challenges together. Always invited in by local partners, we would co-design and facilitate sessions ranging from a few hours to a few days for people to grieve, reflect, dream, plan, and organize for action. Bob Stilger, co-director of NewStories wrote AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin to share the learnings, lessons, and methods from these years.
NewStories began to be called into other communities, mostly in North America, where people wanted to build a better future after disaster. In the year after the Camp Fire destroyed Paradise, California, and other communities on the Ridge on November 8, 2018, NewStories spent a week every month listening to people’s stories, inviting people into connection and explorations with each other. By the end of 2019, we joined with local leaders to create a new nonprofit - Regenerating Paradise - to weave the social fabric that connects us. We used many of the NewStories principles to help local leaders imagine how to Repattern & Restructure for a more regenerative future. As consultants, connectors, designers, and facilitators for community convening, we helped people find a way forward.
Missouri Food Justice Initiative
Philanthropy is changing. Those with funds to give are seeing they need different approaches -- ones that bring them into authentic relationships with those doing work on the ground to both make things better now and to create new and equitable transformative solutions. Missouri Foundation for Health realized they needed a new approach in their efforts to create Food Justice in Missouri. After making a 20-year commitment to a major initiative for The Foundation reached out to NewStories. We’re working with them now. The engagement has helped us develop a deep synthesis of our work with Principles Focused Developmental Evaluation and with Storywork. We are coaches and consultants to the initiative, using PFDE approaches for reflection, wayfinding, and evaluation, and using Storywork approaches to help people across the state connect, convene, learn together, and take action to co-create food justice in Missouri. We’re very excited about what will develop in this new engagement which is making use of just about all our skills and is based on all of our principles working together.
Regenerating Community Leadership
In the summer of 2021, NewStories launched an in-depth learning program for leaders whose work is to regenerate community. Over the last decade, NewStories has worked with grassroots community leaders throughout Cascadia, the Pacific Northwest, across North America, and throughout the world. We created a virtual infrastructure to connect leaders and communities at four scales -personal, local, bioregional, and transregional. Through these virtual learning sessions, New Stories supported leaders in learning from each other and developing new skills/practices that could be applied in real-time. The first of these in-depth learning sessions brought anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion into the middle of regenerating community work. Throughout this project we were guided by the our Principles, helping leaders to Connect & Share: Be an Ecosystem, and Trust the Moment & Be Curious as they attempted to navigate challenges and identify the way forward.
