Stories to Reconnect

‘Narrative Arts’ are a way of using creative arts to tell our stories.

Storytelling – to share, to connect, to learn and to bear witness to each other’s experiences – is an ancient practice found across peoples and places. 

However, many people find that their stories are lost or silenced through discrimination, ‘othering’, labelling and disempowerment caused both by individuals and systems.  For some, it has been hard to find their voice, explore their life experiences and be in a space where they feel truly heard and free to reimagine and retell their stories.

‘Tree of Life’ narrative therapy was co-developed by Ncazelo Ncube and David Denborough to support children and adults who have experienced trauma, particularly in contexts such as HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. This approach is a decolonial, collective and community-based way for individuals to come together and ‘re-story’ themselves, regaining agency and strength through the power of arts-based storytelling.

I have adapted the format of this work to take a slower, more reflective, creative and philosophically-based path. These Lifestory Groups use symbolism and metaphor to represent and explore different parts of your life and your path through your individual life journey, as well as your connections to others and to the wider world.

You will be able to explore various arts, collage and writing techniques to create a visual picture of your life, choosing what you include and share, and how you portray parts of your life to the group.  You learn how to explore alternative narratives about yourself and your life experiences, find ways to challenge dominant discourses and imagine, together, more meaningful ways to retell your stories.

In facilitating these groups over the past few years, I have consistently found that people say they come away with:

• A greater sense of belonging and connectedness, not just with the group but as part of the wider community
• An ability to see themselves and their life experiences through fresh eyes, and integrate different viewpoints
• More connection with their values, and the tools to live their lives in greater alignment with these
• An ability to apply playful, creative ways of thinking and being to many different areas of their lives (relationships, work, parenting, travel)
• More confidence in narrating their life stories, and the ability to listen with real attentiveness and openness to the stories of others
• A groundedness and ability to reflect deeply on life experiences, whilst also being more open and accepting of different voices and viewpoints
• More clarity about who they want to be and how they want to live in the future
  
  In terms of day to day life, this often translates as: greater self-esteem and positive sense of identity, less overwhelm and anxiety, more clarity and confidence, and an ability to ‘slow down’ when facing inevitable life stressors, so that people are responding rather than reacting.

At it’s simplest, we use the motif of a tree to document and represent different parts of our life stories. Each week we draw (collage, write!) a different part of the tree (the roots representing your beginnings, the branches representing your future dreams and plans etc), and at the end of our 12 weeks you will have a beautiful representation of your life in tree-form! We then present our ‘trees’ to each other and have a chance to tell our life stories and witness the stories of others.

I like to make this a more deeply reflective space – we use writing and journalling prompts, photos, objects, and try different creative techniques to examine our stories from different angles and perspectives. I also bring poems, philosophical ideas and writings, and ask that you commit around two extra hours a week to practices so that you can really think about and feel into your stories, which ones represent you right now, and how you might like to communicate these through your ‘tree’.

No, you don’t need to consider yourself an artist, or have any background in arts or crafts. This is all about exploring materials, finding different ways to convey, communicate and tell our stories, and sharing together our delights, struggles and discoveries.

Materials such as paper, pencils, collage materials and paints are just some of the items we might use to tell our stories, but what is important is that you find something that resonates with you, It’s not about being ‘skilled’ as an artist, it’s about embracing a creative approach to thinking, being and imagining.

Is this a therapeutic group?

No, this is a facilitated group for self-expression, creativity and for exploring ourselves and our relationships with others and with the broader worlds we exist in. However, in this space, we don’t just think or theorise things, we practice and embody them within our storytelling and within the group itself.

Groups such as these often bring up complex feelings, new ideas and interesting challenges – they are spaces for reflection and examining new possibilities. This richness is what makes them such valuable spaces, but it can be useful to have other places of support where you can talk over anything that comes up for you, whether that is with a professional counsellor or with a trusted friend.

If you have any particular concerns that you would like to discuss beforehand, or a history of wellbeing or mental health issues that you feel are important for me to know about, please do contact me to talk through what would be most helpful for you.

Nothing too demanding or extravagant – usually just yourself, a few creative tools, an openness to exploration, and a willingness to sit with the unknown, the unfinished and the possible! Once you are enrolled, I will send you some more details about the types of exploration we will be doing each week, so that you can decide what you might like to bring.

Most weeks you will need something to mark-make with; pens, pencils, or crayons are fine, but of course acrylic, watercolour or oil paints are great too, if you would like to use these (though we also have weeks when we use just what is around – it my be rubbish, old books, teabags, coffee or turmeric!). You will also need something to mark-make on – once again, plain photocopy/printing paper is fine, but it can also be lovely, if you can find some, to have a go with different textures such as watercolour paper, old wallpaper, cardboard boxes etc.

The group’s aim is for you to construct your own ‘tree’ by the end of the three months – so it will be useful to purchase (or stick together from small pieces) a large (A2/A3) piece of thick paper or cardboard. We will use this in the first week or two to draw out our personal ‘tree’ design. You can then experiment with the different weekly practices, either directly onto the ‘tree’, or as a separate piece of work which you can then cut out and collage onto the main ‘tree’.

I also recommend that each participant buys, finds or makes a notebook – part of the work we do together, as well as part of the practices I offer you in-between sessions are based on writing, scribbling, collecting, photographing and collaging, so this is a great place to collect your thoughts, and as an initial space for more private reflections before you decide what you want to share with the group, and as part of your ‘tree’.

Working creatively together online of course has a very different feel from when we are in the same room! Personally, I love that we can connect, sometimes across miles or continents, working on our own activities as well as coming together and sharing what we do. However, this online space is also very different and poses it’s own challenges, and I have experimented with a variety of ways of working with storytelling online over the last few years.

The most important thing has been the ability to slow down, make space for difference and the different ways we might use, respond to and communicate through the technology, and to allow the process and the journey to unfold over the three months. I find that each group adapts and finds its own route through – just as each person’s tree, and each group’s focus has it’s own story, so is the story of our sharing an online space.

Feedback I have had from people on th eonline courses is that they would love to also have a chance to meet up in real life – in 2026 I may be offering some day or weekend creative arts and storytelling sessions in addition to this initial course – watch this space!

For those who want to go on a deeper, more bespoke journey, I also offer 1-1 work. Whilst I strongly believe that we learn a great deal from being within a group who can inspire, challenge and show us different ways of thinking about the world, we can also benefit from 1-1 work to deepen into some of our practices and explore areas with more focus. For 1-1 work, I offer 3-4 months of weekly or fortnightly sessions, and more information about this can be found here.

I am also planning some in-person weekends for later this year, which I’m really excited about. They will offer a more intimate, in-depth group, with circles, cooking together and creative arts and storytelling. I also often run smaller ‘taster’ workshops at festivals; this year I am planning to be at Crockstead Weekender as well as Dance Camp East, and might put a few more dates in the diary before the winter’s out! I’d love to see you there if the spirit moves you to get festivalling….!

My long-form work, for those who really want to embed re-storying as a creative and philosophical practice, takes place over a year, working in a spiral format where we weave, reflect, revisit and reweave together. Please DM me for more information about this.