On Monday, August 12, the Chicago Dialogue & Deliberation Community of Practice (CoP), the Illinois Art of Hosting, and the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) Chicago Chapter hosted an evening of storytelling, group sharing, and collective learning. Those in attendance experienced a powerful learning tool used to cooperatively identify insights on dialogue and deliberation (D&D) projects happening across the city of Chicago.
The evening began with a process of storytelling in which a number of D&D narratives were shared in small groups. Fellow group participants acted as either harvesters of a specified theme or witnesses during the storytelling, sharing back insights from the story to the group. When the small group exercise was completed, the entire group reconvened to discover what was learned across the stories and to harvest the wisdom gained. Supporters of collective story harvesting acknowledge a deeper level of learning as a result of the participatory process, one in which insights and learning extracted from stories are seen as highly applicable to work and life.
The event took place at Jefferson Tap and Grill (325 N. Jefferson St) from 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm.
The Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) attended the event and took video of the meta harvest from participants representing each of their story arcs. The video runs about 20 minutes and has been uploaded to IPCE’s Youtube page. Follow the links below to watch the video and to read more about hosting a collective story harvest.
Watch Collective Story Harvest of Chicago Dialogue & Deliberation Projects