Why do we share stories?

I’ve now been involved with CreativeMornings for almost 3 years…

Therefore, it’s about time that my thoughts are written down.

Photography by Gareth Strange

I recently took over the hosting duty of CreativeMornings Cardiff from the wonderful Sarah Morris and since then I’ve been asking myself: “Why do I do this?, Why do we do this?, Why do we go to these talks?, Why do we love listening to talks? and What makes a good talk?” Realistically speaking these topics can be individually written on each new blog however for now I am just going to start with the term “why”.

Trend of storytelling…

It feels like the term ‘storytelling’ has started to be used by designers and makers a lot more in the last 5 years. It is now becoming a term that is over used and a cliche in design especially branding… This is of course not a bad thing, it means we have realised the value and power of storytelling. And taking the user/customer through to a journey instead of simply presenting them with pieces of information. Artists, theatre-makers, filmmakers have thrived on this, and it seems like it’s our turn as the design industry.

With the value of story telling, came the desire for sharing. As the technologies we are using have developed, social media started to be at the heart of everything we do. Social media changed the way we work and forced us to open up our creative progresses, our work and personal lives. And this may be the reason why talks, lectures and networking events are growing by the day.

In the early days of “Mad Men” advertising people would never share their stories or secrets openly, because of how very few people were running the business. There was so much less competition. Now there is diversity in techniques and approaches, and so much more being produced as well as the demand to produce that there is a need to be inspired from stories other than ours. Somehow we developed a need to hear other stories in order to have more courage in our own journeys. We became more curious, more determined to stay interested and stay hungry to learn…

Photography by Open Eye Photography

Then there is the sentimental side…

Maybe we started seeing value in sharing our stories not only for inspiration but also to feel familiar or for the need to know that we’re not alone in our struggles and in our insecurities…

Some stories need to be told to break free

And finally we tell stories to get empowered. I have to be honest this is the most touching part for me! As someone who is exploring the power of telling stories I came across with the CreativeMornings talk by Michaela Angela Davis and this quote just made perfect sense…