Storytelling MAtching to Capacity & Goals & Assessment sheets.doc
Mapping the Community Exercise.doc
Knowing Your Community within the Context of the Engagement Project
Understand your:
- Project Goals
- Other Strategies & Approaches
- Time-frame & Scale
- Local Resources & Funding
- Local and Other Partnerships
Understand your community
Identify the following and their inter-relationships:
- Groups
- Associations
- Organizations & Institutions
- Leaders (Recognized and not)
- Communication Avenues
- Outliers & Disengaged
- Networks
- Community Events/Calendar
- Gathering Spots (Third Places*)
- Sacred Places**
Consider:
- Challenges
- Storytelling Capacity
What Do We Mean By Network Mapping? A Brief Definition
Mapping the community in a storytelling project means something different from locating inhabitants of a town or city by where they live. While geographic
mapping conveys essential information about the contours and needs of a community, so too do connections and relationships not rooted, at least not directly,
through location. By mapping we mean plotting the community members through their relationships with one another, their interests and their connections to
the town itself. Such mapping identifies the formal institutions and associations and the informal groups, arranging them by connections between them of
mission and constituency, illuminating overlaps and divides between them, and the ways in which people interact within the community. Mapping the connections
and interests of a town and the relationships between them reveals important details about what makes a community unique and what it values, details that can
be missed through surveys and interviews alone. Mapping uncovers how residents actually interact with one another, where and when. Placed against the
geographic maps of the area, network maps point to enhance understanding of past planning patterns, current community issues, and promising routes to'
participatory planning for the future
What Does Mapping Have to Do with Storytelling? A Brief Explanation
Mapping allows a clear view into the community and its stories. Providing a nuanced view of the interactions within and between formal and informal groups, associations and institutions, mapping guides the planning of a storytelling project by locating stories, storytellers and story catchers, and story-sharing opportunities. By identifying and synthesizing the interests and allegiances within the community, mapping points to story themes located in place or micro-community or issue. Mapping informal groups by interest, such as knitters or gardeners or hunters, can help ensure full coverage of the town, a true effort to include everyone, to reach out to everyone. BY looking at the relationships between groups, it is possible to pinpoint groups to bring together within a storytelling project, groups that might not know they share common ground. Network mapping locates leaders, both known and unlauded, the people who connect groups, who have long reaches into the community, and who work hard as volunteers, all important individuals in ensuring that a Heart & Soul planning project reaches the full community, builds active engagement and leads to sustained participation in the future.
The Big Picture: Taking the Time to Look, to Understand
To design and put into action an effective Heart & Soul storytelling project that seeks to build trust, to engage townspeople in participatory democracy practices and to reveal the values held by the community, you’ll want to know as much about your community as possible. For a project to be truly inclusive, engaging the widest spectrum and the greatest number of people possible, you’ll spend time at the outset identifying the inhabitants, not merely by name and address, but also by affiliation and connection to others in the town through their workplace, formal and informal groups and associations, and their interests.
You’ll also want to work efficiently while taking care to move slowly enough to respect people’s natural reluctance to try new approaches. As people are unaccustomed to having storytelling (or much of any other truly community-wide participation) integrated into the planning process—something normally conducted by officials and experts—they might naturally be skeptical of storytelling’s impact, or of the benefits of putting their efforts and precious time into such a project. They might even resist a change to the way things get done—we talk a good deal about change, but transitions are unsettling as they throw us into the unknown, the untried, and therefore, within this specific context of this village, town or city—the untested. The town seeks tangible answers and results NOW, and so processes that seem slow, meandering, and requiring considerable time and effort will not necessarily be met with open arms.
How do we transcend this tension? One technique is to map the community. Mapping ultimately saves time while providing useful information and engaging
the community. In deciding where and whom to contact for stories, you are thus thinking, too, about how to engage the full community. In a particularly
polarized community, or one with marginalized populations, or one that commutes out to work and has little free time, it might not be possible to light up
your sign: “Step right up, Storytelling Opportunities Here” and expect people to come running to you with their stories, their values, their knowledge and their
willingness to join up.
Perhaps one group in town, delighted with the prospect of storytelling, is ready to dive in, be trained and get going with the project. As heartening as this
response is, resist the temptation to throw the town headlong into a project meant for the entire community but championed only by one segment of the town.
When do we map the community? Who maps the community?
As soon as possible. By as many people as possible. And continue to add detail to the maps.
Mapping the community with as much detail as possible at the project’s outset will build a powerful view of a community’s formal and informal networks and individuals’ connection to them. Early project mapping also reveals gaps in an organizing committee’s understanding of the full community as well as groups and individuals underrepresented in the project formation. The maps, if updated continuous and as a core part of the project will continue to highlight the reach of the project, the authentic engagement of the full community’s participation, and potential biases in outreach and inclusion. The maps build an effective portrait of how the community sees itself and where it locates its values.
HEART & SOUL STORYTELLING MAPPING EXERCISE
Purpose: To understand the community context (who lives here and how do they interact with one another and where), storytelling capacity
(local professionals, partners, funders, volunteers) and storytelling opportunities (other strategies being used, overlaps, events)
Materials Needed
Six Colors of Sticky Notes
Wall-Sized Roll of Butcher Block Paper
Colorful Markers
PART A Mapping the Personal
Individuals can map their own heart & soul values; the groups, formal institutions and associations to which they belong or feel connected.
Using Five Sticky Note Colors, Generate as Many of the Following that You Can Think of in Your Community, One Item per note, keeping them color-coded:
- Color A: Institutions e.g. Schools, Government, Hospital
- Color B: Associations e.g. Farming groups, volunteer organizations such as Rotary, United Way
- Color C: Organized Clubs e.g. Books, Scouting, Garden, Outdoors,
- Color D: Informal Groups e.g. hunters, people who hang out at the coffee shop every morning, volunteers, people who love old cars, parents who watch their kids play hockey
- Color E: Interests e.g. painting, gardening, foraging, antiquing, fixing up old cars, playing video games, collecting salt shakers, reading mysteries, watching old movies.
On a piece of paper place your name in the center and then arrange the sticky notes relative to their connection in your life. Place the items that are most
important to you or to which you identify most closely closest to you and arrange those less important or connected further out. Rearrange the sticky notes
to indicate how each group, institution, etc. relates to one another. Are some closely connected?
Pin each person’s map to the wall and look at them all for patterns, similarities and differences, for what they tell you about this community and about the
groups represented.
PART B: Mapping the Community
This time the focus is on who belongs in these groups and how are the groups related to each other rather than to you.
- Post all of the institutions on a large sheet of butcher block paper and arrange the institutions as they relate to one another.
- Beneath each institution, list the names of people within those institutions.
- Add formal associations as they relate to the institutions and/or to one another.
- Do the same for groups, both formal and informal.
Look for connections between people and groups that already exist.
Who provides the connective tissue between groups—who gets things done, who is respected throughout town?
You try to engage the people with influence, the people who are trusted, the people with a long reach into the far corners of the community. These might not
be the people you predict.
·
PART C: Mapping Capacity
Study the map and using colorful markers, identify local storytelling capacity by circling potential storytellers, partners, resources:
- Local storytelling organizations, experts, professionals
- Holders of stories (the great story spinners and the holders of local knowledge)
- Groups & individuals less well-known to you
- Likely partners and supporters
- Links out beyond the community to regional resources
PART D: Identifying Gathering Places
On a large, detailed physical map of the community/town/city, mark the following, each with different colors:
- Formal meeting/gathering spots
- Informal meeting places (third places*)
- Sacred places**
PART E: Seeing Relationships
- Place the two maps side by side and study the relationship between this place and these people. How might this visual mapping help you to plan your storytelling project?
- How might you design a storytelling project that goes out to those who will be less likely to participate while you are gathering momentum with groups closer in? If you design small-group story circles for groups in the third circle out, you might pull some of these people in closer to the center.
- Look for potential story-committee members from the groups in the second and third circle, especially people with a reach into areas more difficult to engage. See if they would like to be trained as story-circle facilitators, interviewers, story hosts.
FORMAL GROUPS
- Employers
- Business Associations
- Nonprofit Groups
- Cultural Organizations
- Communications’ Organizations
- Religious Organizations
- Schools
- Hospitals
- Government: national, state, Local
- City Services: Police, Fire
- Libraries
- Health Organizations
- Charitable Groups
- Arts Groups
- Youth Groups (Scouts, etc)
- Political Groups
SHADOW NETWORKS
- Informal Groups form around such things as:
- Sports
- Ethnic identity
- Cultural identity
- Neighborhood
- Books & gardens & other interests
- Pets & Agriculture & Oudoors
- Families with a parent at home
- Collectors
GATHERING SPOTS
- Formal meeting places
- Coffee shops
- Library/Schools/Town Offices/Post Office
- Barber Shops
- Restaurants
- Parks
- Sports Centers
- Businesses
- Neighborhood Meeting Spots & Homes
*Ray Oldenburg describes third places: “Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second’…
The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends…They are the heart of a community's social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape." Ray Oldenburg, The Project for Public Spaces, http://www.pps.org/info/placemakingtools/placemakers/roldenburg.
**Randy Hester defines sacred places as “those places—buildings, outdoors spaces, and landscapes—that exemplify, typify, reinforce, and perhaps even extol the everyday life patterns and special rituals of community life, those places that have become so essential to the lives of the residents through use or symbolism that the community collectively identifies with those places.” Randy Hester,“Subconscious Landscapes of the Heart,” Places 2, no. 3: 01-15-1985 http://escholarship.org/uc/item/608645gj
Karen Stephenson’s Definitions of Hubs, Gatekeepers, Pulsetakers:
“Hubs are the people who know the most people. They facilitate expansion of the network, trading (for example, the exchange of favors), and the rapid dissemination of information.
Gatekeepers occupy a critical path. They are often the only bridge between an important part of the network and everyone else. They make a network stronger, in part by helping people focus and move things along.
Pulse-takers are called on by other significant connectors, often for their judgment or insight, and they help the group maintain its integrity and perspective. They are invaluable in times of turmoil.”
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