Can narrative practices contribute to ‘social movement’? An invitation to join a project

G’day and welcome to this Friday afternoon video presentation from Dulwich Centre in which we invite you to join a project considering the challenges and possibilities in relation to narrative practices contributing to ‘social movement’. First shared in 2015, I’ve also included various links to texts and videos at the following link: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/can-narrative-practices-contribute-to-social-movement-an-invitation-to-join-a-project-from-david-denborough/

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The ‘draft’ Narrative Therapy Charter of Storytelling rights

This video was the first Dulwich Centre online Friday Afternoon video in February 2015 and represented the launch of the Narrative Therapy (draft) Charter of Story-Telling Rights. This Charter is part of a broader project in relation to ‘narrative justice’: * When meeting with people whose problems are the result of human rights abuses and injustices, how can we ensure we do not separate healing from justice? This Charter proposes a framework for considering storytelling rights. We hope it will spark discussions about the rights of people who have experienced trauma/social suffering in relation to how their stories are told and received. We invite you to discuss this Charter with us, with friends, with colleagues, in your organisation and elsewhere. You may like to endorse this Charter or offer suggestions, changes, and or additions. For more information and further resources, visit: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/narrative-therapy-charter-of-story-telling-rights-by-david-denborough/

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In the early days of the pandemic: A message to Chinese colleagues

I can vividly recall making this video message to Chinese colleagues. It was at the very beginning of the pandemic, when only those in Wuhan were facing what was soon to become global. Please forgive the bad lighting (and bad hair). It was before we had all learnt about zoom and well before we had created a studio at Dulwich Centre. We didn’t know what was to come, but I wanted to send a message of friendship to Chinese colleagues, especially those in Wuhan. Knowing that volunteers in Wuhan were already responding to great hardship, I shared stories of narrative practice from Palestine, from Rwanda and from Malawi that I hoped may be resonant. As a postscript, many months later when Covid-19 was now ravaging other parts of the world, the Chinese colleagues I initially sent this message to then returned videos of support and connection.

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Can you tell us more about this? Responding to the questions of Brazilian colleagues

I love teaching contexts with Brazilian colleagues – whether in person or online. In this session, organised by Lúcia Helena Assis and Recycling Minds I was posed the following questions: - All narrative practitioners usually honour the native peoples of the place where they live and their ancestors, how could we do that here in Brazil? - Lúcia Helena Assis told us that you wrote a whole book based on letters where you wanted to talk to your great-grandfather and that in a way you wanted to deal with issues that were difficult for you. Could you tell us a little about this? - I would like to know about educational projects with children and young people with reference to narrative practices. In the context of mental health, which projects have been implemented? - Can you please talk a little more about Double Listening, the Absent but Implicit and the practice of External Witnesses in the work you developed with detainees? And, also, about the practice of producing collective documents through music. - Lúcia Helena Assis told us that you know counsellors from three different locations in Kurdistan. Iraq and that these counsellors work with Yazidi women who were captured by ISIS. Could you tell us more about this? - What was your most memorable moment with narrative therapy? - How can narrative practices respond to the conflicts of such a polarised world and to the problems arising from macro socio-economic and cultural contexts? I did my best to respond and share relevant stories.

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Eliciting and honouring Yazidi counter stories: As described to workers in Kurdistan responding to Yazidi women

The workers at the Jiyan Foundation in Kurdistan, Iraq, are responding to Yazidi women who were formally captured by ISIS. I had the pleasure of meeting with Jiyan Foundation workers in Kurdistan back over 10 years ago. During the pandemic they requested an online training, translated simultaneously into both Kurdish and Arabic (hence why I am speaking slowly and deliberately). This clip was in the first session of six days of training in which I sought to convey the narrative metaphor and the concept of dominant and counter storylines of identity.

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What gets us through hard times: Creating collective documents & Rwandan experiences

During the first workshop in Rwanda in 2007 with survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, one of the key moments was developing a collective document entitled ‘Living in the shadow of genocide: how we respond to hard times – Stories of sustenance from the workers of Ibuka’. In this video message to current East African students of narrative therapy, I seek to introduce ways of creating collective documents; share an English video version of that early document from Ibuka workers; and invite participants to create their own documents & songs.

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Histories of narrative therapy and community work in Rwanda

Some of my most significant workshop experiences have taken place in Rwanda, in particular a workshop back in 2007 with counsellors and assistant lawyers from Ibuka, the national genocide survivors association. This workshop was the result of an invitation from Kaboyi Benoit and I was there with Cheryl White and Jill Freedman. Fast forward to the present and there is now a narrative therapy and community work course through the University of Rwanda. During the pandemic, I was asked to share some of the histories of connections between practitioners in Rwanda and Australia. This was the video I sent through to be shared in Kigali.

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Looking for answers in the right places: An introduction to collective narrative practice

One of the key sparks for the development of collective narrative practice came from a challenge posed by Paulo Freire. In this presentation, I share this story and the key principles of collective narrative practice. I then share the story of work in which a number of these principles first became clear to me. This was with a man, called Peter, who wished to testify from prison about the abuse he had experienced in children’s homes.

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Stories from the origins of collective narrative practice: personal and political histories

In response to a request from Chinese colleagues, in this video I tell the story of how I first learnt about narrative therapy ideas while working at Long Bay Prison in Sydney through being handed an issue of the Dulwich Centre Newsletter on Men’s Ways of Being (edited by Cheryl White and Maggie Carey). In seeking ways to respond to the social issue of men’s violence, I then travelled to Adelaide to study an intensive with Michael White and being introduced to two community projects being undertaken by Dulwich Centre at the time – a gathering for Aboriginal families who had lost a loved to a death in custody, and an alternative community mental health project. Upon returning to Sydney, in schools and in the prison, the first principles of collective narrative practice started to take shape.

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Checklists of social and psychological resistance

The first checklist social and psychological resistance was developed in collaboration with Mohammed Safa in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2006. In this presentation, I share that story and describe how such checklists can be created to honour local resistances and what is precious to people even in the most devastating of times. It is a process and practice that aims to assist practitioners make visible storylines of resistance.

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Exchanging stories, skills and songs: the possibilities of narrative practice

In this keynote to the Fifth International Conference of Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy, I introduced metaphoric narrative practices such as the Team of Life, Tree of Life, Kite of Life, Umbrella of Life and Recipe of Life. These methodologies combine aspects of local folk culture with narrative practice and seek to enable people to make contributions to others and towards addressing whatever broader social issues they are grappling with. I also showed a short video related to the Team of Life approach: “Trying not to fight with friends: Tips from the Stay Strong Football Club”. The keynote ended with a song, trying to demonstrate the principle of transforming anguish to art and social contribution. This song was crafted from the words of ‘Jess’ and in collaboration with feminist narrative therapist Erin Costello.

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Four stories of narrative practice: David Denborough, Fariba Ahmadi & Dr Abdul Ghaffar Stanikzai

In this keynote for the Australian Family Therapy Conference, I was joined by two Afghani colleagues, Fariba Ahmadi and Dr Abdul Ghaffar Stanikzai to share four stories of narrative practice: o Family therapy through the Team of Life approach o Consulting Afghan children through a time of crisis (the fall of Kabul to the Taliban) o ‘Surviving the ocean of depression’ audio resources And a project that involved the use of collective narrative practice with Syrian young people in Adelaide who created a video to welcome future new arrivals.

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Three stories, three songs and ten principles

For a keynote address to a narrative therapy conference in Cologne, Germany, I tried to articulate 10 (or 11) key principles of practice through sharing three songs and the stories of how these were created. These include the first song I wrote in a work context using narrative practice. It’s called ‘Pride’ and the lyrics were spoken to me from an HIV positive man, Wayne, who I worked with in Long Bay Prison. The second song is the ‘theme’ song of the Power to Our Journeys Group … a group of folks who heard voices facilitated by Michael White. The final song is a personal one seeking to articulate complex, nuanced laments and the unanswerable questions that can accompany grief.

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Narrative therapy and philosophies in dialogue: Can we contribute to ‘social movement’?

The organisers of the International Congress of the ÖAS in Salzburg/Austria (June 9th 2023) were seeking to bring narrative therapy and philosophy into dialogue. In my keynote, I discussed four political philosophies which offer continual challenges to me – Indigenous philosophical challenges; feminist philosophies; Foucauldian critique; and the challenges of Paulo Freire – and linked these to practice stories.

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