Storytelling and Arts to Facilitate Community Capacity Building for Urban Planning and Social Work

Abstract

Creating social connections and fostering engagement in communities is a growing challenge for community work. Planners, social workers, and community activists are starting to look towards the arts and storytelling as a way to promote community capacity. A community in Lopez Island, Washington, facing sustainable housing and agricultural issues brought in a two-day storytelling and theatre program to build capacity for their ecosocial work. This research describes facilitator engagement methodology and pilots a community capacity survey to evaluate the experience of workshop participants. Preliminary results show that the storytelling program makes strides in deepening connections to others and generating authentic dialogue. Participants reported both positive experiences of building trust and negative feelings of vulnerability. As funding can be a major barrier for community groups to incorporate arts programs, this research introduces a preliminary survey that communities can adapt and improve upon to help them start gathering evidence-based data for assessing measures of community capacity. Though the facilitators brought unique theatrical and choreographic skills to the programming, planners and social workers can take away for practice a simple storytelling exercise that participants enthusiastically expressed fostered listening, trust, and connection.