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Storytelling creates
connection and resonance

Creativity and Education: What’s the Connection?

11/13/2013

2 Comments

 
By Melinda

As part of my PhD program in psychology / creativity studies, I recently wrote a paper exploring the relationship between creativity, learning, and education. Because education is one of our main areas of interest at Syncreate, I thought I’d share some of my explorations here in the blog. 

My paper explored three main ideas: 1) the educational process consists of a creative, dynamic, and ongoing negotiation between individuals and their worlds, 2) connection, interdependence, and relationship lie at the heart of meaningful learning, and 3) creativity, imagination, and the process of making meaning underlie the most profound learning experiences. In my experience teaching writing and religious studies at the college level, the most powerful educational moments for students (and for me) are those that that foster a process of active meaning making. They are those that ask students to draw upon, but also to investigate and question, their own experiences, and to actively consider how course material relates to their own lives. They are those that invite students to explore real-life situations and events outside of the classroom, such as cultural performances or religious ceremonies, and to write about them in light of course themes and theories. I find that this experiential, embodied, and engaged approach to education not only evokes deep learning and insight, but also can be personally transformative for students, broadening their perspectives and worldviews, and in some cases, forever changing the way they understand and relate to their own lives.

For example, while teaching freshman composition at Tulane University in New Orleans, I developed a course called “Performing New Orleans” that paired performance theory with readings about the rich cultural and performance traditions of the city. I invited students out of the classroom and into an experiential dialogue with those traditions through visits to Preservation Hall, Mardi Gras parades, the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, and The Historic New Orleans Connection. For their final papers, I asked students to synthesize all of this theoretical, academic, and experiential knowledge and to creatively analyze of one of New Orleans’ performance traditions. Similarly, while teaching comparative religion courses at Tulane and Austin Community College, I encouraged students to attend, observe, and participate in various religious events and festivals and write about them in conjunction with the course material we were covering our course readings and discussions. For their final course task, students had the option of completing a creative project relevant to their own belief systems and life journeys, and to present these projects to one another during the final week. I conceived of this assignment as an exercise in meaning making, an opportunity for students to more deeply explore their own passions, and to create a personal shrine or altar, work of art, musical composition, performance, or multimedia presentation that expressed their deepest convictions. When students took this project seriously, they created works of incredible beauty and poignancy, which evidenced deep reflection upon course themes. 

If we, as educators, began to seriously consider the relationship between learning and creativity, we would see that these two processes truly spring from the same source. Both learning and creativity involve an active, experiential, embodied, interconnected, and fully engaged process of meaning making. As this fundamental relationship between learning and creativity becomes more widely understood, I hope that educators and policy makers will begin to embrace creativity as absolutely central to the educational process.

2 Comments

How Writing and Storytelling Can Enhance Health and Well-being

7/1/2013

3 Comments

 
By Melinda

Have you ever felt so connected to a story you read or heard that it changed the way you think about your life? Have you experienced the cathartic process of journaling, such that the act of writing about a trauma or challenge allowed you to release and transform it? I remember when I moved to Austin from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and then experienced the traumatic breakup of a long-term relationship; around that same time, I had the good fortune to come across Pema Chodrön’s book When Things Fall Apart. Reading Pema’s story about how her own marriage ended under similar circumstances, as well as her advice for sitting with difficult emotions, helped me through the panic attacks and allowed me to start rebuilding my life. I began practicing meditation and journaling about the anger, the betrayal, the hurt, and the sadness, until slowly my world opened up again, allowing me to live in a fuller and richer way than ever before.

In recent years, scientific research has demonstrated the profound effects of writing and storytelling, both on the people who share their stories and those who receive those stories. Storytelling, perhaps the oldest distinctly human pastime, allows us to make meaning of the events of our lives, to teach and transmit information in a compelling way, and to share our experiences with others. Writing, a newer and more sophisticated human invention, helps us to solidify our learning into memories and makes it possible to address a much wider audience over a broader span of time than oral communication alone.

Recent studies have shown that storytelling (rather than simply relaying facts or bullet points) exerts a powerful influence on our emotions and thoughts, and helps us relate to others. When we hear a story, our brains activate as though we’re actually experiencing the events of the story firsthand. Writing your story and reading others’ stories can also have a calming effect on breathing, blood pressure, and anxiety. For example, a study published in 2011 showed that medical patients who listened to others’ stories of similar health problems received benefits in the form of lowered blood pressure. And the benefits may go well beyond the physiological: a National Public Radio report also from 2011described how end-of-life patients encouraged to write down their life stories often find new meaning in their lives and create a legacy that they can pass on to their families.

Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas, has spent his academic career researching the effects of writing on health. In one study, he asked trauma survivors to write about the traumatic events they experienced. Those that did were able to make sense of their experiences in new ways, leading to healing and long-lasting health benefits, even years after writing about their traumas. Dr. Pennebaker’s website offers helpful instructions for writing about traumatic events to improve your physical and emotional health.

Syncreate embraces transformation through the creative process; this is one of our major areas of interest. Have you experienced the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of writing and storytelling? We’d love to hear your stories!

Links:

Visual News – How Does the Act of Writing Affect Your Brain?http://www.visualnews.com/2013/05/28/how-does-the-act-of-writing-affect-your-brain/

The New York Times – When Patients Share Their Stories, Health May Improvehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/health/views/10chen.html?_r=0

National Public Radio – Dignity Therapy: For the Dying, A Chance to Rewrite Lifehttp://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

Weebly.com General Psychology – How Can Writing Improve Your Health?http://general-psychology.weebly.com/how-can-writing-improve-your-health.html

Dr. James Pennebaker – Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/Home2000/WritingandHealth.html
3 Comments

Charlotte’s Credo

4/10/2013

1 Comment

 
By Charlotte

I believe in the power of art to transform the frightened heart, the scarred psyche, the unquiet mind.  In the tradition of Spider Woman, I have been taught that the story is a co-creation woven by what we each bring to the circle, that to tell is as important as to listen.  Storytellers use the web of story to inform, educate, enlighten, explore how we might live as social beings, capable of inflicting the worst kinds of pain and dispensing the deepest moments of compassion.

I believe that humans crave narrative, and that storytelling offers a path for healing, growth, and clarity.  It is through the story we learn to know each other and to overcome our bigotries and our pettiness.  I believe art should be available to all, no matter a person’s education, class, race, gender, sexual orientation—any of those small-minded categories where too many of us get confined or lost.  I believe that art needs to remember to be humble, that accessibility is just as important as aesthetics, that the garbage man is just as important on the stage as is the senator.

Specifically, I believe art has taught me my most important lessons: to be patient with process, to keep an open heart toward all people; that to there is more risk in vulnerability than there is in intellectual posturing; that sentimentality is too easy.  Instead I want pursue the quiet moments of potential change that are housed in every moment of our lives; that stories are a certain kind of magic, one that we willingly seek out so that our lives might seem brighter, wholer, more intact.
1 Comment
    Authors:
    Charlotte Gullick
    Melinda Rothouse

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