Restorative Stories
Stand-alone workshops exploring how we can develop our emotional intelligence and our ability to humanise each other, inspired by the wisdom of traditional tales
These drop in online workshops are open to anyone interested in restorative work, peace and reconciliation, conflict resolution and the continuing development of emotional intelligence and resilience, connection and understanding.
Traditional storyteller and restorative justice practitioner Hannah Moore offers a series of workshops that invite creative thinking and deep reflection about living and working restoratively, about how we cultivate a culture of compassion and develop our practices of actively humanising each other.
Each workshop starts with a folk or fairy tale from different traditions around the world, that speaks to restorative themes including: trauma and healing, repairing harm, overcoming conflict, reconciliation and nurturing compassion.
Each session is 3hrs long, so there's space to dive deeply into the themes each story explores. The sessions will involve a variety of creative exercises and discussions, based on the principles that:
when we have space to reflect we go forward with fresh energy
the more we understand ourselves, the better equipped we are to understand others
stories offer us the gift of shared imaginative material with which to explore deeply personal and strong collective experiences from a place of safety
Workshop 1: Bittersweet
Stories which explore the forces in our lives and in our world that can help repair harm and support reconciliation.
Workshop 2: Sticks and Stones
Stories which explore the relationships between the harmer and the harmed in a process of healing.
Workshop 3: The Heart Drums
Stories which explore the work that can be done on an individual level, interpersonal level and community level to rebuild after a destructive experience.
Workshop 4: Snake Skins
Stories which explore humanising and rehabilitating responses to trauma, violence and othering
Workshop 5: Twist of Fate
Stories that explore the relationship between internal experiences and external behaviour, and how we learn to reconcile with ourselves.
Using traditional stories as a starting point in each session, we will explore the questions, insights and wisdom they can offer us for our own lives, for professional practice and for the world today through discussion, personal reflection, creative exercises and practical application.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Understanding, experiencing and practising compassion can be key to effective relationships. And it is a quality we can be quick to lose when there is stress, pressure or disagreement, or when we don’t feel safe or understood. In these instances, we can forget or disbelieve that being compassionate will make us feel better. But our traditional stories don’t forget this…
This workshop series uses traditional stories as a starting point because they are creative, accessible, engaging and universal in their themes - they give us a depersonalised shared language for exploring behaviours, feelings and experiences that can be hard to talk about.
Starting in the world of the imagination can move us out of our busy minds and into a freer, more intuitive and responsive head-space. This helps to unlock deep discussion and expansive thinking in the workshop that follows.
Stories invite the listeners to experience compassion as they travel with the characters through the challenges and triumphs they face. Listening to a story together means participants come to the work from a creative experience that is shared yet personal – their own journey into the imaginative realm of images, symbols, emotional discoveries and a limitless potential for change.
Modern adult listeners to traditional storytelling often report that the experience of being allowed simply to sit and listen to a story. and to get lost for a time in their own imaginations, feels therapeutic and restorative in itself.
And these stories have been passed down for hundreds of years because they contain deep wisdom - what a hopeful place to start!