Genuine storytelling takes a moment of connection
A few years ago I remember pitching a storytelling project to a former colleague. Someone with a lot of international development experience.
“How do we make sure we aren’t just parachuting in, videotaping people in a village, and leaving?” she asked. “I always worry that these projects will be extractive.”
I decided that pointing out how my budgets have barely had room for post production, let alone parachutes, was not actually a comforting response. The reality was that I shared her concern. So I shared my own confrontation with that struggle.
In the world of international development, where I work, stories have a lot of power to open eyes, and to put it plainly, pocketbooks. And while there’s nothing wrong with pairing the art of storytelling with the value of fundraising, problems emerge when we start seeing the stories simply as resources, losing sight of the human beings behind them.
The image my friend described, minus the parachutes, is a very real scenario.
Extractive storytelling. A blitz of cameras and tripods and lapel mics. Several takes of an interview, and then they’re gone.
Another colleague with decades of experience tells me how he’s seen too many examples of villages preparing feasts for filmmakers only to be disappointed by a team that obsessively tinkers with their gear, shows little interest in the welcome ceremony, and makes a quick exit to stay on schedule.
Sounds like an embarrassing endeavor to be a part of.
I’ve been working as a climate storyteller for close to a decade, and I truly love the work. The people that I get to meet is the best reward for chasing down stories around the globe. Over the years, the ethical storytelling has asserted itself as a top priority.
Once you start becoming aware of how storytelling can have a negative impact on a community despite good intentions, you start to become pretty mindful of your actions. And there’s nothing like a couple cringey stories to give that motivation an extra boost.
I know that in my experience, I haven’t been perfect. But still know that the idea of treating somebody’s story like a “good to procure” without actually spending time with the person on a human-to-human level is wrong. Wrong, but common.
And so I started asking myself what can we do in order to avoid this.
On the bulk of my storytelling trips, I play the role of director and conduct most interviews, while a film crew, typically one that is locally based, manages the equipment, set up, and recording. I’ve found that the time that it takes to get all that set up is often an opportune time for me to build rapport with the people I’m filming.
This has looked like everything from joking with a Mexican farmer about Taco Bell, to tasting an Ethiopian family’s home-brew. In Burundi, it meant learning a dozen words in the locally-spoken Kirundi, and using them to endear myself to the group I was about to interview.
Obviously, twelve words in a narrowly-spoken language wasn’t going to get me very far. But, I treated the encounter like some sort of improv game where I had to make up for a lack of vocabulary with physicality and intonation. And apparently, that worked. We actually found ourselves joking together, and laughing, and by the time I got around to interviewing Esperance, an amputee after the country’s civil war who moved back home to rebuild, she shared her life’s story with openness and tenderness.
This particular visit to Burundi was over two years ago. Last month, a colleague of mine managed to visit Burundi in a very different capacity, but he managed to run into Esperance and recognized her from the videos we produced.
“You know the first thing she said to me?”
“What was it?”
“Where’s Philippe?”
Hearing that moved me more than I was expecting to. Esperance remembered that day. I had too, of course. But something about knowing that an encounter left an impression that lingered on for both parties two years after the fact seemed significant.
It was a reminder that the work of storytelling is a gift. It’s a privilege that I get to have this as my day job, but its also a huge act of generosity on the part of my many featured subjects to share their life experiences with me.
Being able to retell your journey gives you a greater chance to own it. And the days you do so in front of a camera, knowing that it will be shared broadly, into countries you’ll never set foot in must be something.
I’m quite lucky in that my storytelling trips are once-in-a-lifetime experiences that I get to partake in every year. But I don’t want my fortune around that frequency to obscure the fact that for the people I talk to, this is a big deal. I don’t want the repetition to remove any of the reverence around a person’s story as they’re telling it.
My memories of Esperance are a reminder that stories shared with generosity and vulnerability need to be received with respect and good stewardship. That means putting care into crafting the video, the article, or whatever the finished product ends up being. That means making sure the story is presented to an audience in a way where they can receive it well. And that means not treating the visit like a one-and-done transaction.
At the heart of ethical storytelling is connection. Making the world a little smaller, and bringing an audience on one side of the planet in closer to a human being on the other side. It means finding the elements of humanity that can pierce through language barriers and unfamiliar settings.
You can’t possibly expect to accomplish any of that if you yourself aren’t making an effort at a real connection in the moment.
A world of thanks to Esperance for the reminder of how much that matters.