Posted: 2nd January 2023

The Power of Words: Transnational Workshop in Krefeld

By Jenni Schüßler

Our third transnational workshop was hosted by machart in Krefeld in September 2022, bringing together young people and youth workers from across Europe. Based on all the insights and experiences from the last one and a half years, this workshop week was about identifying large social narratives and myths, including a Future Lab with the potential to guide our ideas of the future and replace them with new narratives that make alternative futures possible.

Preparatory webinar with Prof. Dr. Michael Müller

The week started with a preparatory webinar with Prof. Dr. Michael Müller. He spoke about “Narratives of Populism”, and how different narrative archetypes can be seen in media and political discourses. Amerissa Giannouli (Inter Alia) reflected on the ideas he presented:

“Prof. Dr. Michael Müller […] spoke about how we are used to reactive stories where the protagonist is facing a crisis or a challenge and they either try to deal with this or adapt to it. There are also open stories, he explained, where the protagonist goes for a quest or they just dive into the unknown in order to change their undesirable reality. Open stories are scary, in a sense that we cannot predict the outcomes and this is too uncertain for us.”

Grand narratives and myths: workshop with Annette Sickert Karam

“Hope… power… a moral lesson… justice… ethics… a story… values.. things that society has to learn and people should be inspired by… such as becoming brave as heroes… look for role models…”

Participant response to “What do myths try to show us? What do they represent?”

In response to a workshop with Annette Sickert Karam, Trainer and Coach for Intercultural Competence and Team Development, the participants were divided into two groups and were asked to create a totally new culture with its special characteristics, language, traditions, rituals, taboos, hierarchies, values, define what people should do and don’t do, the environment and places for certain uses, the narratives and myths that constitute such a culture.

After defining the rest of the elements that respond to their culture, each group received a visitor from the other group. Then, the visitors had to go back and share what they experienced in the unknown culture they had the opportunity to visit and experience. Finally, each group had to create a “travel guide” presenting the other group’s community and culture based on the very brief experience they had by travelling there. Both groups presented the travel guides to each other.

“ We cannot know everything from the first glance. We need to experience something, to become interested in learning about others, to participate in their customs in order to understand them.”

Participant after the workshop

Other activities included discussions on ‘why it is important to think, talk, reflect and dream about the future’, the creation of a story wall with photos, writing and drawing, and a Future Lab – read more about this here. These activities inspired young people’s contributions to our closing event, the Future Narratives Symposium.

Future Narratives Symposium

Growing from the activities, conversations and discoveries throughout the week, we shared and celebrated our experiences with a public event. There, participants presented their new narratives of the future unveiled through the Futures Lab. Alongside these stories, Nerina Finetto (Traces&Dreams) spoke about: “The power of narratives. The past, the present and the future.”

“We humans are storytelling animals: we create our own stories, tell ourselves stories about our lives and the people around us; we inhabit a set of cultural narratives that determine how we see ourselves and our realities; we tell the stories of the future for us and our societies, and these stories influence the way we act and react in the present. What if we enhance our understanding of our own stories? What if we kindle our imaginations and the imaginations of young people, empowering them to be active co-creators of their own futures and our common future? These questions are where the Future Narratives project started. If we want a future for all, it cannot be imagined only by some!”

Dr Stefan Bergheim, the director of the non-profit think tank “ZGF – Center for Social Progress”, and part of the core team of the worldwide UNESCO Futures Literacy Network, was a guest speaker at the event. With his presentation, he invited us to imagine different futures together as a way to experience and strengthen our own future competence.
He used an example of a picture of a palm tree while explaining the steps of the Futures Lab participants had experienced during the training course. He explained to us how it is to make our assumptions visible, which could be the shared images of this palm tree and how we could imagine a totally different palm tree picture that opens up a space for different options of actions in the present, for the future.

A little self-practice: print out, colour the tree and draw the surrounding you think the palm tree is standing in.
Ask other people to do the same and talk about the assumptions you all had about palm trees.
Then: paint a totally different, unexpected, irritating picture of this palm tree. Write a story about it to change people’s assumptions about palm trees.

This is what Future Narratives is all about.