Storytelling around the 21st century fireside : using filmic storytelling and world-building concepts to connect with media savvy audiences

Abstract

The purpose of this session today is not to bemoan the fragmentation of television and film. I love the fact that we all get to watch what we want, when we want it.

The world is very different than at the time of Baha’u’llah, when real live people sat together around a real live fire and told stories to each other.

The purpose of today is to examine and help recognize some of the story constructs that audiences – that is to say, entire cultures – now consider normal.

We have, in fact, had our brains trained to respond to media and story in a certain way. And I would pose, that our media savvy and media programmed brains are applying these constructs across the board in ways that we are yet to understand.

I propose that we pay attention to this – because these constructs are changing the way that audiences, in the western developed world at least, interface with us, Baha’is both when we communicate and tell our stories as an ‘organisation’. And the way in which we use story to express history and spiritual concepts to connect to both others, and ourselves – particularly the way we think about story within the Ruhi curriculum. I’m going to focus mostly on Ruhi today. And we are going to do some fun stuff with some story examples from the Ruhi.