Refs:Collaborative online storymaking - building understanding through arts-based workshops for adults with a life-limiting illness
Collaborative online storymaking: building understanding through arts-based workshops for adults with a life-limiting illness
by Amanda Roberts
2021, Academia Letters
DOI: 10.20935/AL1609
Storytelling’s potential to support humans in constructing an identity which they can thenlive out is well-established (Ricoeur, P. (1980). Narrative time. Critical Inquiry, 7(1), 169-190.; Bruner, 1996 The Culture of Education; Clandinin et al. 2009 Negotiating Narrative Inquiries:Living in a Tension-Filled Midst; Lawton,2000 Lawton, J. (2000). The dying process) . The opportunity such storytelling oers us to both find our place in the world (Bruner1996 The Culture of Education) and have a sense of agency over our lives within it (McAdams, D. (1996). Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Frame-work for Studying Persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7(4), 295-321.)
renders it a po-tentially supportive tool for those with a life-limiting illness. Frank’s
(Frank, A. (1998). Just listening: narrative and deep illness. Families, Systems and Health,16(3), 197-212.)
discussionof ‘deep illness’ confirms this potential. Experienced by sufferers as altering both life choicesand identity, deep illness can be soothed through storytelling’s ability to ‘repair the damage’ done to the ill person’s sense of identity and life map and to provide a way of ‘re-drawingmapsand finding new destinations’
(Frank, A. (2013). The wounded storyteller . (2nd Edition) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.) . Whilst the value of telling one’s own storyand benetting from the connection and sense-making which this activity allows is acknowl-edged (Sakalys, J. (2003). Restoring the patient’s voice. The therapeutics of illness narratives. Jour-nal of Holistic Nursing, 21(3), 228-241) , the benefits of collaborative writing are less well-explored. Anatole Broyard, reflecting on his own ill-health, shares how storytelling provided him with a way toght the fear, not so much of dying, but of the ‘diminished self’ (1992:25 Broyard, A. (1992). Intoxicated by my illness. New York: Fawcett Columbine)
I wondered towhat degree collaborative storymaking could serve the same function. The powerful imageof a stranger is used by Exley & Letherby (Exley, C. & Letherby, G. (2001). Managing a disrupted lifecourse: issues of identity and emotion work. Health, 5(1),112-132.)
to evoke their research respondents’ feelings of being ‘outsiders’ in relation to their previous identity and their relationships with others.There are echoes of the practice of ‘othering’, marking a person or group as different to others
(Johnson, J., Bottor, J., Browne, A.,Grewal, S., Hilton, B. & Clarke, H. (2004). Othering and Being Othered in the Context of Health Care Services. HealthCommunication, 16(2),255-271) , here, to those who do not have a terminal diagnosis, and to the ‘chasm of perspective’ which such a diagnosis brings (Gawande, 2014:99 Gawande, A. (2014). Being Mortal. London: Prole Books.) . Again, individual story-making is seen to be a helpful response to such feelings of exclusion (Frank, 2013), but howmight collaborative storymaking help?
My own reflections focused on the degree to which participants actively engaged in theprocess. I wondered about the motivation for collaborating on a story which was somewhattangential to what I assumed were the main preoccupations of participants’ lives. I was inter-ested in the degree to which participants worked harmoniously, supporting one another andfocusing on the achievement of a final product rather than on satisfying individual need. Theproposition that social identity is formed through identification with a group (Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33, 1-39.) ,in this case, a group of people with a terminal diagnosis, seemed strongly reinforced throughthe group’s storymaking practice. In attending, and adopting the accepted practices of, thisonline group, participants may find affinity (Gee, J. P. (2001). Identity as an Analytic Lens for Researchin Education. Reviewof Researchin Education, 25, 99-125.) , understanding and comfort missingelsewhere. I wondered about the facets of collaborative storymaking which might render it particular effective in strengthening a collective commitment to such mutual support.
Reflecting on participants’ reactions to amendments to the developing collaborative storywas illuminative. Tentative proposals made by one participant to alter a particular sentence, originally another person’s contribution,were always graciously accepted. Participants seemed more interested in supporting the development of the whole than in preserving their own con-tributions. Indeed, plotting activity and attitude against Storch’s (Storch, N. (2013). Collaborative writing in L2 classrooms. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.)
collaborative writing model showed high levels of participant equality and mutuality in the writing process. Sup-port was also shown by those who attended the workshops but did not contribute any originaltext. Instead, these participants validated the contributions of others and of the developingwhole. The value of being there, of meaningful presence
(Peters, J. (1994). The gaps of which communication is made. Critical Studies in MassCommunication, 11(2), 117-140.) , so important in on-line support groups (Gottlieb, B. & Wachala, E. (2007). Cancer support groups: a critical review of empiricalstudies. Psycho-Oncology, 16(5), 379-400.) , is manifest here.
It could be surmised that collaborative storymaking served simply to provide a focus, anactivity allowing group members to work productively and affirmatively together. This might suggest that any collaborative activity would be equally effective – that joint jigsaw-making orgroup felt-making, for example, would similarly shore up feelings of group anity and worth. I am not sure this would be the case. The unique power of story in building relationships islong established (Leung, C. (2009). Collaborative narration in preadolescent girl talk: A Saturday luncheon conversation among three friends. Journal of Pragmatics, 4, 1341-1357.) . Such relationships lead to the development of a supportivecommunity (King, N. (2007). Developing Imagination, Creativity, and Literacy through CollaborativeStorymaking: A Way of Knowing. Harvard Educational Review, 77(2), Art, Design & Architecture Collection, 204-296.)
in which individual stories can be told, heard, honoured and valued. However, individual stories told in such communities enrich not only the storyteller but alsothe listeners. In Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, for example, individual narratives act notonly as personal testimony but also as source texts for others to reinterpret, supporting theunderstanding of their own experience
(Steffen, V. (1997). life stories and shared narratives. Social Science and Medicine. 45(1),99-111.) . Here, one person’s story leads toanother and both personal and mutual understanding grow.
Collaborative storymaking seems to build on this power. Indeed, in small groups such asthe /Gripping Yarns/ workshops, collaborative narrative effort provides the cohesion vital forgroup survival (Fine, A. and Corte, U. (2017). Group pleasures: collaborative commitment, shared narrativeand the sociology of fun. Sociological Theory, 35(1), 64-86.) . Differences in experience, viewpoint, illness type andtrajectory are unimportant. Instead, engaging in storymaking together builds and sustains thecommunity of ‘people who would understand’, whose stories connect with your own (Denzin, N. (1987). The Alcoholic Self. Newbury Park, California: SAGE.) . As such it has the potential to enrich the lives of those living with a life-limitingillness, building communities of individuals who can empathise with and support one another (Frank, A. (2016). The standpoint of story-teller. Qualitative Health Research, 10(3), 354-365) . Collaborative storymaking thus facilitates the demonstration and developmentof friendships and connections (Leung, 2009) in a way collaborative jigsaw-puzzle makingmay struggle to do.
