Democratic Storytelling
What means thriving in a place? And how can one capture an identity of a place?
A Vinnova Project within RISE, together with the municipalities of Kiruna, Gällivare, Umeå, Luleå, Skellefteå and Boden.
Thriving North is a project that aims to communicate the story of the North of Sweden, for and by current inhabitants, former residents, or future citizens. But what does it mean, communicating a story? What is this story? What does it mean to tell a story? And can we even talk about one story when trying to capture the spirit, the lives, the environment of so many forms of life in the North of Sweden?
With these questions, Thriving North explores the notion of democratic storytelling through designing pluralistic, non-homogenous ways of presenting narratives in and from the North of Sweden. This means that we do not aim to create one story that should say it all, rather the opposite: we aim to find a way whereby many different, contrasting or aligned, small or big, long or short, personal or communal stories have a place in the narrative of The North of Sweden.
Thriving North thus strives for a way to make space for a heterogenous approach, rejecting the idea of one story that should do justice to the complexities, relations, and the diversity within its context. The project explores how to stimulate a continuous creation of different stories, a continuous growing, ever evolving narrative that requires personal engagement, attention, and respect for it to grow and to be nurtured.
The toolbox that we created is designed for municipalities to use democratic storytelling as a daily practice.
It includes a process and exercises helping in gathering stories about the residents of the municipality, but can may also support participatory practices within communal activities such as city planning, city development and other social progress projects that are taking place at the moment.
