Creating change one story at a time.
Are you interested in bringing storytelling into your organisation or practice?
Founded in 2009, The Story Conference provides a space for practitioners interested in sharing, exploring and co-creating new ways of working with story-based methods.
The event features great food and attendees can participate in 30+ workshops led by international experts, pre-conference sessions and performances, promising rich learning opportunities. The engaging and interactive atmosphere, along with a vibrant community of practice, makes this event exceptional and one not to be missed.
Who is it for?
This conference is for you if you are:
- A manager, leader, change consultant, OD professional, group facilitator, community builder, coach, educator
- Interested in learning more about working with story and narrative techniques within the areas of business, community and/or government
- Seeking new ways to help bring meaningful connection, relationship and change to fruition within the workplace and beyond.
Videos from previous years
Past Speaker Highlights
Pictures of Health: 3 Second Stories
Simon Kneebone
Simon Kneebone is a cartoonist and illustrator with many years experience working with a range of community and other organisations, getting their messages into pictures that help communicate ideas effectively with humour and fun. You will find yourself leaving this workshop with some basic skills in cartooning a ‘3 second story’ on any issue you are passionate about, that can be shared.
Conflict Stories: Taking the melodrama out of conflict
Samantha Hardy
Samantha Hardy is a leader in the field of conflict management and resolution. More than 85% of employees experience conflict at work and when this is not managed well, there are negative impacts on the employees’ health and well-being (as well as negative impacts on the business). In this workshop participants explore the way that people tell stories about their conflicts, and how managers can work with employees to help them to create more constructive conflict stories.
Using stories in Diversity and Inclusion work
Duncan Smith
To engage authentically with Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) means working with our values, beliefs, and behaviours, both conscious and unconscious.
Personal stories are an essential tool to help us overcome barriers in all aspects of diversity.
Co-creating Well-being: Facilitating through Stories
Mary Alice Arthur
Many organisations are today looking into how to adapt to the increased complexity and speed of change in business. When dealing with complexity we often speak of the need of fully accessing the capacity of everyone – but how do you support people to step up individually and bring their best capacity while still maintaining a strong collective core focus? How do you bring more commitment and meaning into the work you’re doing so that others want to be committed as well? For leaders and managers, working with storytelling can improve communication and strengthen teamwork and collective action.
What’s Your Phoenix Factor?
Todd Montgomery
Resilience is a hot topic, defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity. Phoenix Factor is something more. It’s your capacity to endure adversity – even to be overwhelmed by it – and to use those experiences to be reborn stronger than you were before. We all have this ability and, like a muscle, it develops with use. Join us to discover your Phoenix Factor and what it means for you: how strong yours is now and how you can grow it. Learn today how a strong Phoenix Factor will enhance and enrich your own quest for personal and professional wellbeing.
Changing the Narrative
Sandy McDonald
A voice is only empowered if it’s heard. First we must manage attention, an increasingly scarce human resource in a world of overwhelming information and hyper connectivity. Brain science shows us why emotionally charged, character-driven story holds the key first to holding attention, then producing in our listeners empathy, trust, a sense of belonging and a willingness to co-operate. When we understand how stories told in context work to do this, then we can employ them to change a hopeless, or negative narrative into one that fuels clarity, vision and collaboration.
The Future of Belonging
Sophie Weldon
The Future of Belonging is an exploratory session for those who want to understand how stories can lead to reducing isolation and loneliness, one of the biggest health challenges of our time. Sophie Weldon from Humankind Enterprises presents the award-winning storytelling programs she and her team have developed to build a future of belonging and how their innovative StoryPod tool is enabling thousands of people to be heard and share their story.
Testimonials
The Story Cookbook: Practical Recipes for Change
Editor(s): Andrew Rixon, Cathryn Lloyd
“The Story Cookbook: Practical recipes for change” published by Cambridge Scholar Publishing emerged from a recent conference.
Stories and storytelling represent powerful creative processes for communication and change across personal, organisational and community contexts. With over 80 activities collected from contributors around the world, The Story Cookbook is one of the most comprehensive collections of story-based activities currently available.
The book, organised by menu courses, provides the reader with a treasure trove of activities ranging from elegant relationship-building story techniques to more complex story processes such as quantum storytelling, genre bending and provenance. Designed in an easy-to-follow format, the smorgasbord of storytelling ideas that fill this book provide rich pickings to apply and adapt for all sorts of situations.
This enticing resource is a must-read for consultants, facilitators, educators, change makers and leaders interested in working with story and narrative techniques for positive change in individuals, organisations and communities.
