‘The Story’, an event last Friday organised by Matt Locke from Channel4, really demonstrated the power of stories to engage and communicate. It was also a great reminder of the pleasure of listening to a good story. Highlights for me were:

Blast theory speaking about their SMS driven game/conversation ‘Ivy4evr‘, which gave young people a chance to talk about drugs and sex with a fictional character.

• They chose SMS because it was accessible and intimate, people can share secrets in a text they wouldn’t necessarily do on facebook etc
• The game lasted 7 days and started every 7 days, so it felt contained and people didn’t have to wait too long to start
• They had an interesting structure of linear stories and ladders, so that characters would continue their conversations where the previous one left off
• They thought that in a game you can do anything, but with a conversation there are rules that you have to build in, to make it feel real

Karl James spoke about listening and the potential that listening has to prevent people becoming their story. He does a lot of listening to people and children as part of The Dialogue Project, which really resonated with the work we do here at Livity. Hearing recordings of young people talking about reaching their potential was particularly moving.

Phil Gyford spoke about his amazing project to put Pepys’ diary online, one entry at a time. He had some good advice about what’s important about building things online:

• luck
• tone, especially of small details (eg they have annotations rather than comments on the blog)
• listen to users
• choose an obscure topic that’s just popular enough

He also had a really humble approach that allowed him to accept and build in if people wanted to write their own fan fiction, or additional twitter charachters, etc, which has made it easy for people to get involved, contribute and add to the success of the project.

Other interesting points included:

Zombies talking about how giving people a space to talk after an event / game can generate stories,

Lucy Kimble talking about the danger of too much data in our lives

Mark Stevenson talking about writing the future by believing in stories from a positive future.

Thanks Matt Locke and Margaret Robinson for a great day.

By Ben

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