#14 The Power of Storytelling on #BrexitDay
"The ability to produce stories is the way we become historical."
Hannah Arendt
It’s Friday afternoon on a historical day. I’m sure there will be tons of stories written about the 31st of January 2020 in the UK, so to me, it seemed like a good time to talk about storytelling.
We are in the business of creating brands through creativity and our stories are bound to our historical context. Storytelling is the cultural product of memory, and their telling can create a "universal feeling of taking part." Looking at the stories of today not only provides insight into the particularities of historical experience but also into the meaning of being human specifically during that time. There are two stories, one is that of January as a month, and another of this day in particular.
It would seem that the mood this January has felt heavier than usual. Yesterday 'January long' was trending on twitter. CNN created a ‘month-ender’ report with all the news highlights from the month, as broadcasters usually do at the end of the year.
I’ve also received email marketing campaigns from brands containing all the following phrases: 'A guide to survive January', 'We've made it through January', 'January - it's all over now'. This month really became a vessel for our collective mood.
And Twitter got a massive engagement with this tweet - which is stating the obvious but nonetheless proved popular.
I don’t remember seeing such pronounced negative connotations around January, ever. Some may say that all the different events from this month are telling a unanimous message: January feels long, dreadful, tiring, dull. And while we found consensus around January, there is nothing of the sort around Brexit, the other story here. For this event, there are as many possible stories as people living in the UK and in Europe.
For Walter Benjamin, a philosopher and cultural critic, ‘the storyteller takes what they tell from experience- their own or that reported by others. And in turn, makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale’. The best storytellers interpret, but they don't offer easy explanations for what they recount, just like a pianist does when they interpret a musical composition. Through the subtlety of their presentation and interpretation, storytellers open people’s imaginations. In this way, the ‘story's richness and germinative power endures’.
The privilege of being part of the creative industry is that we get to create and shape stories on the daily. Arendt says that ‘the least tangible and most ephemeral of man-made 'products’ are the deeds and stories which are their outcome.’ They are intangible but they are powerful: the stories we choose to retell become a way not only of exposing us to differences beyond our biases, but also open us to other ways of thinking about the present, the place and age we live now.
It’s a great way to think about our role in creating stories for society. As we reflect history in our creative output, we can at the same time, tap into a mindset or perspective to offer something new that (as Benjamin said) could open people’s imagination, maybe even allowing to dream different futures.
It’s a sad day, but I’m going to allow the ‘germinative power’ of this story by @ByDonkeys flourish - a story where Europe looks after the UK’s star in the EU flag while we take a short break.
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