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.
