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Virtual Conference of Partnerships with Asia

'Storytelling – An ancient tradition'

Our Third Conference of Partnerships with Asia was all about storytelling and interactive learning. Find out below how this creative method can be used for online events, and why stories enable a particularly enriching dialogue.

On a computer screen, a few small windows show different participants of the event.
Thumbs up from the participants of the third Partnership Conference with Asia. Photo: Engagement Global

Online, 1 to 3 March 2021. One of the oldest traditions of human learning and collective knowledge transfer is storytelling. For thousands of years people have been sitting around in circles and telling stories about their experiences, their adventures and what they have learned. We're all familiar with them: those great stories told by our favourite teacher, our colleague or our own grandmother. Talented storytellers can capture our attention anew time and time again.

Today, society is digitally networked and can follow interesting stories around the globe. Particularly for online and international conferences where a joint dialogue is the aim, vivid stories taken from people's lives and their practical everyday experience can be especially valuable. They help to capture participants' attention, enable experiential learning, and often communicate complex content more effectively than formal descriptions or a traditional presentation. The crucial question is, what is it that makes stories so vivid that we still enjoy recalling them several years later. We can identify with good stories. They contain emotions, tangible experiences and facts, but also a development or a learning process. Consequently, the experience related need not necessarily end up as a success story.

Tips for successful storytelling

All of us can be storytellers. Give it a try! The most important thing is that you are inspired by your own experience: Have you discovered something new or faced up to a particular challenge? Only then will you be able to tell your story with passion and enthusiasm. It can also be enriching if the story is told by two people, so as to shed light on different perspectives.

Storytelling and collective listening at the Conference of Partnerships with Asia

A poster entitled "What's your story?" graphically depicts many aspects of the event and the various town twinning schemes.
Graphic Recording on the second day of the conference. Graphic: Anke Dregnat

At our Third Conference of Partnerships with Asia the storytelling method was used to facilitate an interactive dialogue. On day two of the conference the 50 participants became active listeners to six international stories taken from the work of projects in partnerships between Asian and German municipalities. The storytellers were invited to tell a story revolving around a change, a breakthrough or a lesson learned. The storytellers took us on a journey to a fire truck that unites two worlds, to sustainable urban development and citizen participation, to elephants and cranes, and to hospitals and intercultural life, and told us how partnerships had become friendships.

After the storytelling, the listeners used the supplementary method of collective story harvesting to 'harvest' and collate the various aspects of each story. One strength of the method is that participants are supposed to listen with different 'ears' and focus on different aspects of the story. While some listeners focus on the success factors or lessons to be learned from the story, others focus more on the emotions felt or open questions.

Perspectives for active listening

With the 'collective story harvesting'  methods, various listeners adopt different perspectives and focus on specific aspects of the stories told.

  • Emotional effect: Which aspects have a positive, inspiring or touching effect?
  • Success factors: Which factors helped make the story work well? How did the partner municipalities deal with challenges?
  • Lessons: What lessons can be learned from the story? Which lessons learned can be transferred to other partnerships and projects?
  • Questions: What questions does the story raise?

By combining vivid stories with the different perspectives of the listeners, which can then prompt a joint discussion, the method enables a particularly vibrant dialogue, especially for virtual meetings. To conclude, in the words of one participant: 'Today I learned that virtual platforms can even inspire my partnership.'

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