We Tell Stories (2)

Back at the beginning of April, we published this poem, "We Tell Our Stories", which we had written collaboratively. 28 people, from 19 different nationalities reflected on how and why we tell the stories we tell. It says, we think, something about the power and beauty of stories and storytelling.

In other circumstances we might have spent time playing with how to perform it: exploring how we might use our voices, individually and together, to add depth and emphasis to the words.

Like so many things in all our lives, lockdown made it impossible to do that in the way we would have done in "normal" life. But, like so many things, we have learned to adapt and discovered that we can still find ways to create something beautiful

A number of the project participants created individual recordings of the poem. They practised the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. They reflected on the emotions they wanted to express. They each produced something very beautiful.

But this was always meant to be a collaborative project, it was always "We tell our Stories" never "I tell mine". It was always intended, in the writing, and in the telling, to hold something of the deep truth that sharing stories brings us closer together and helps us discover our shared humanity.

And so a number of hours of sound editing, too many to count, followed to bring those ten recordings together, to create a harmony of different voices.And it became this:

  

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