Capacity Building Workshop 1: Remixing Stories

Too often, our focus on contemporary problems makes it impossible to see beyond immediate constraints that confine our ability to bridge differences to build connections with people whose world views may be different from our own. Responding to this, the Remixing Stories workshop taps icons and narratives borrowed from popular culture to express civic identities and bridge divisions and differences that are making it hard for traditional political institutions to move forward with solving persistent problems. Participants begin by gathering and sharing stories that inspire them. Then, exploring each other’s stories, they start to mix and recombine elements between stories, seeing how the combinations of unexpected elements lead to whole new creative narratives. As story remixing leads to real-life sharing, reflection, debate and collaboration, participants imagine how their combined stories might be enlarged and used to spark social movements and campaigns.