Finding my way to stories

Written By Tara Berry

“We’re not making an informational video this weekend. You will be telling a particular personal story with a beginning, middle, and end,” said Robert Kershaw, StoryCenter’s Director of Public Workshops, during the workshop’s opening orientation. It was December 2011, and although I had a lot of writing and video production experience under my belt, with this assignment, my pulse quickened. Throughout the weekend ahead at their headquarters in Berkeley, California, StoryCenter would be providing mentors to help the 15 participants with the assignment, but I wasn’t sure that would help my growing creative block.

I was at the workshop, albeit now a little panicked, because I had attended a breakout session sponsored by the Center for Digital Storytelling at an Association of International Educators (NAFSA) conference a few months before. The Center, renamed StoryCenter in 2015, is a nonprofit started in 1998 that shows people how to use digital platforms and resources to tell meaningful stories.

The breakout session I had attended was focused on helping students relate their study abroad experience through digital stories, yielding at least two beneficial outcomes for study abroad and administrators. First, putting together a digital story would help a student process their study abroad experience. Additionally, the finished story when shared would spark interest for other students to participate in study abroad. In my job back on campus at that time, two of my biggest goals were to help students connect the dots of their academic experiences abroad to their academic and personal goals, and to increase the number of students participating in Exchange Programs. By the end of that breakout session, I had decided to participate in one of their Weekend Public Workshops, and by the next month, my budget had been approved to go, learn the tools, and make a meaningful marketing video for study abroad.

Now at the workshop in Berkeley, instead of working on the marketing tool I had envisioned, I had to look for an experience in my own life and assemble a personal story. I thought through different events, but life and its experiences are ongoing, often without clear beginnings, middles, or ends.

My weekend mentor sensed my growing frustration with our assignment. He told me to narrow my scope a little; my story need not represent my whole identity. Then, he asked why I had come to the weekend workshop. After explaining that I had come to make a video that would help with marketing and to learn a format to pass on to students for processing and sharing their study abroad experiences, he asked if I had a similar story of my own to share. I hadn’t officially studied abroad, but I had participated in a student group trip immediately after graduating college.

“Was there anything that happened on that trip that would be relatable to students studying abroad?” He asked.

“Yes…within the first couple of days, I got lost–and it was terrifying,” I answered.

“Well you obviously didn’t stay lost,” he smiled.

“Yes–that is true.” I said. “And it was a very funny story of how I found my way…”

And finally, the assignment clicked.

Up until that Berkeley weekend, I had often thought of video production or even simply writing an article as gathering a lot of information together about a topic and then paring things down to a digestible segment. I would make sure I had thoroughly researched and put together all the needed information. But outside of these video production scenarios, what did I enjoy reading or watching? Well, the answer was always, “A good story.”

In the book, The Storytelling Edge, Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow write:

"Good stories surprise us. They make us think and feel. They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way that a PowerPoint crammed with bar graphs never can.”

I would also add to that a video simply crammed with information and facts.

Stories stick with us because they are personal. We want to see how others live life, and we want to connect the dots to our own experiences. We want to see we are not alone, or learn from others ways that we can handle life better. We want to commiserate or we want to gain hope that we or the world at large can grow and change.

I learned so much that weekend in Berkeley. I learned that we all have little stories inside us. I learned the framework of making a simple but cohesive digital story. I learned some really practical skills to add to my video production toolkit–like where to find royalty-free resources to use for soundtracks and B-Roll. I learned to work through writer/creative blocks. I also learned how to make a process simple and transferable, which has translated into supervisory skills and training skills. And I came away from the weekend with a neat little artifact to commemorate my first experience overseas.

During that weekend in 2011, I didn’t know that a few months later I would begin a job far from the field of Study Abroad. And I also didn’t know that within a few years, iPhones and Smartphones would revolutionize video production, allowing someone to put together a story within minutes. But as those two facts have unfolded over time, the concepts and principles I learned that weekend have only strengthened and followed me in my work and life. Even though the world is filled more fully with information, marketing, opinions, and beautiful pictures (which I do enjoy scrolling through daily), stories are still what connect us in community, show us what is possible, and inspire us to find our way.

Storytelling since then:

A young girl talks about her fundraising efforts for a local food pantry. Filmed and edited by Tara Berry.

The goal of this video was to find the story within the organization’s exercise of strategic planning, to make a “business” exercise compelling. Another goal was to continue to allow the members of the organization to get to know their leaders. Filmed and edited by Tara Berry.