David Denborough archive

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.

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.

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.