Who Benefits? (Advantages)

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A Story of Personal Experience:

The most illustrative way to explain the benefits of storytelling in relation to people with disabilities is to give some personal accounts which inspired our interest in this topic.

I guess it begins with my (Akira's) brain hemorrhage in the summer of 2008. Without warning, I was not only hospitalized for two and a half months but ended up undergoing rehabilitation for a year instead of going back to school like I thought. Throughout my rehabilitation, storytelling repeatedly came up through different forms of recreation/dramatic therapy as brain injury survivors are often asked to "tell their story".

End result, I'm obviously back in school and when asked to find a group to present my fable to, I asked a local brain injury activity centre which I used to attend during rehab if I could  come and tell my story, they said "Absolutely!". Before I knew it, I was on my way to Networks with Chae and Amanda who had agreed to come tell their fables as well. The experience of telling our fables to the audience of ten brain injury survivors at Networks inspired this project.

While the Executive Director, George Kapatanekis felt that it was Networks who was reaping the benefits of this agreement, being that we provided some entertainment, a fun activity for the participants at Networks and gave them purpose in helping us, , we have since decided that it goes both ways. Amanda, Chae and I think that telling our stories to audiences who face disabilities can only make us stronger and more able tellers as we have to adapt to new and different environments to do the telling. We also had the opportunity to learn about ourselves and about a large group of amazing people. And to think they think it's us helping them?! How silly!

We hope that through our project, you can feel more prepared to tell your stories to people facing disabilities because #1, it will help you and #2, disability is everywhere.

This laid the foundation for our project as we are personally passionate about challenging perspectives and seeing disabilities in a new light. 

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Taking a closer look at the relationship between the teller and the audience:

  Reciprocal relationship

As you will see in our reflection, from telling our story at the activity center for people with brain injuries, we were very inspired by how both we as the teller and our audience benefited from the telling. It was not a one sided relationship. Similarly to fable "The Lion and The Mouse", both parties benefited from their interaction.

This is why we have portrayed this relationship in a circle. Both participants benefit, regardless of the way in which they benefit or what they take away from the telling.

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