Collective story harvesting

In the Art of Hosting community over the past two years a group of practitioners have developed a tool called the Collective Story Harvest. I’ve used it several times and it’s a powerful and useful way to rapidly learn from the stories in the room.

Today comes news frim Mary Alice Arthur, one of the developers, about recent developments with the methodology.

I’m reporting in from the road again, this time from the airport in Chicago. I’ve had many opportunities to catch stories along the journey and this time, I’m here to report in on what’s been happening with the method of Collective Story Harvesting.

We’ve been playing with this method for over two years now, using it in trainings, with clients and in many other gatherings. Attached is the latest version of the document and it now includes:

A group harvesting one story or set of stories together
Many stories being harvested simultaneously
A case study of CSH being used as the key focus for an organisational teambuilding
Using CSH during a community of practice gathering – all of telling and harvesting stories
How this method can support and work with other methods

A little “light bedside reading”, we are now weighing in at 19 pages. I have also been collecting all the harvesting arcs I’ve been hearing about to make a database of potential arcs or themes we can all draw on. If you have input to this list, please let me know. There’s a googledoc you can be invited to where your input can be collected.

The next level of CSH is about to happen. For some time now, I’ve had my eyes set on larger systemic stories that can be of benefit to us all. We – a group of dedicated Danes and two adopted Danes — are about to host a grand experiment as we attempt to harvest the story of Denmark going bankrupt in 1813 because we believe this story holds some keys for both Denmark and the world about how to deal with adversity.

If you’d like to be involved in an ongoing conversation about storytelling and the Art of Hosting, please join me on the Ning:
http://artofhosting.ning.com/forum/topics/storytelling-and-the-art-of-hosting-conversations-that-matter

And for more about the power of story, have a look here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/william_ury.html

Wishing you deep listening for your stories,

Mary Alice

Enjoy