This is an essay about the best piece of storytelling I’ve encountered in a long time — Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up comedy special on Netflix. Yes, she’s funny, but she’s also an incredibly powerful truth teller. This NPR essay points to some of the reasons why — but watch the special first!
Here’s a lovely post about the First Baptist Church of McMinnville, Oregon, and its use of storytelling to create community, remember history, and engage people beyond the sanctuary. The post includes a variety of very useful resources for doing this kind of storytelling particularly in the context of worship.
“I’ll tell my story” is a project of the Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice. Formerly incarcerated persons tell their stories through the creation of digital stories using the CDS methodology.
Sr. Liz Thoman, long time advocate of media education, spoke with me often about her joy in doing photography as a spiritual practice. It is lovely to see that Eileen Crowley has extended this idea and developed a website to help people engage photography through this lens.
Dr. Eileen Crowley, professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, has created a lovely website on “storytelling as ministry” in which she shares pragmatic resources and lovely examples.
Here’s yet another Redglass Pictures short film, this one focused on how stories fund political campaigns. It’s absolutely fascinating to hear this political strategist talk about the story he told that helped get George Bush elected. This story is particularly fascinating given what happened in our most recent election.
Here is another Redglass Pictures film, this one is Ken Burns talking about story — and in it, he talks about how stories tell truths, and yet also manipulate.
Redglass Pictures is a studio that is focused on creating short, compelling films. This is one in which novelist George Saunders talks about what’s involved in creating a story — and how it brings us to truth. George Saunders: On Story from Redglass Pictures on Vimeo.
Three new resources that I find particularly powerful in media education are the following: the 2017 issue focused on “Agency” of the Journal of Media Literacy (available for free) Sonja Vivienne’s book, Digital Identity and Everyday Activism: Sharing Private Stories with Networked Publics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Henry Jenkins’ book, By Any Media Necessary: the New Activism …
I frequently invite people — in my classes, in church settings — to do theological reflection using commercials. Patricia O’Connell Killen long ago published a lovely book with an excellent process in it for more general theological reflection, which I have adapted. You can download my handout, based on her book. And here are some …